In my last post, I made mention about the numerous studies that indicated working married women have extramarital affairs far more often than stay-at-home wives. A few days later, fellow asshole Vox Day posted about this aspect of women, though in much more detail. Not only do working women cheat more, also…

Working women are more than three times more likely to be divorced than their stay-at-home counterparts.

The longer hours women work, the more likely they are to be divorced.

Children of working mothers are 23% less likely to pass college entrance exams.

Children of working mothers are 29% more likely to be unemployed.

Children of working mothers will weigh an average of four pounds more by age 11 than those raised by stay-at-home moms.

Good God. Some of those stats surprise even me.

Since I’m against the entire concept of traditional monogamous marriage in the first place, I tend to ignore statistics regarding the different ways people choose to manage their marriages. If they’re married with eternal promised monogamy, co-owned debts or assets, and no prenup, the damage is already done no matter what they do.

Where I differ with Vox is he believes getting married to a career woman is bad but getting a traditional monogamous marriage to a stay-at-home mom is a great idea. Despite his usual logic which I respect a great deal, he comes at this from a traditional Christian viewpoint, so I’m not super surprised. The problem is in both cases you’re eventually in for a shitload of drama, reduced freedom, reduced sex, cheating, and a divorce, at least some of the above if not all.

Therefore the “which type of woman makes a better wife” debate is one I tend to ignore. If you’re debating that, you’ve already missed the point. Instead you should be debating whether the vast majority of human beings are capable of monogamy that lasts 40 years or more. If you’re already read any of my stuff, you know they aren’t.

Coming at this issue from the real world with 60% divorce rates and 70% infidelity rates rather than a Disney fairytale world where people stay married forever and never cheat as long as they “screen” for a woman who would make a “good wife”, here’s where I stand:

In a living-together OLTR (whether legally married or not), the woman should work, at least part-time, at least in most cases. She should also keep at least some of the money she earns as “100% hers” that she can spend or save however she wishes. My reasons for this:

1. The vast majority of modern-day women who don’t work will eventually get BORED. A bored woman in a long-term relationship is a serious problem and is often the catalyst for everything else going wrong.

2. Women will slowly become resentful because of the fact they have to financially “rely on you”. Don’t get me wrong, initially they love getting all their bills and clothes taken care of for free, but over the long years they will grow to resent it.

3. As I’ve said many times, in romantic relationships co-owning anything with your partner that’s worth more than about $200 is a horrible idea unless you like drama. She should have HER money, and you should have YOUR money. There should be no “our” money. Her money will be more meaningful to her if it comes from her efforts rather than yours.

4. Happy, sexual, passionate, compliant women in relationships only exist when they know the man can easily terminate the relationship whenever he wants. When she knows she’s “got you” (by living with you, or being married to you, or having your kids, or whatever) that’s when she slowly transforms from cool chick to ball-busting bitch who doesn’t do blowjobs any more. If she does not work and you financially support her, your ability to easily terminate the relationship is severely hampered, and believe me, she will know this.