This is the question I have been asking men around California that I meet at various blogger and pundit meet-ups for dinner. One dinner guest I sat next to the other night told me he had gotten married last week. We were discussing marriage at the table and I turned to him and asked why he had gotten married. “Can you name one reason a man should get married?” I asked, trying somehow to be polite, but probably failing miserably.

He thought about it for a minute and said “because the woman wants to and he will lose her if he doesn’t.” That sounds more like blackmail to me than a reason. Last night, at another event, I asked other men if they could name five reasons a man should get married. There was silence and then a discussion about the war against men and if that was true or not.

Another day, I talked to a hair dresser at a salon about men and marriage and she said she had a cousin who had a boyfriend who wouldn’t marry her, even though they had two children together. “She is desperate to get married,” said the hairdresser. “What’s in it just for him?” I asked. She couldn’t think of anything.

As I think about it, I wonder in today’s anti-male climate, whether there are financial and legal reasons that a man would want to marry. Maybe I’m being too cynical here. Can readers help me out?