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The Question Is Simple, "Why Marry?" Gather Ye Flowers Don't Buy The Garden

Toogood reports ^ | July 1, 2002 | Fred Reed

Posted on by Stand Watch Listen

W ere a young man to ask me, "To marry perchance, or remain forever single?" I would, given the hostile circumstances today of law and love, urge caution. "Marriage is a commitment of several years of your life, plus child support," I would say. "Do not make it rashly." The question is simply, "Why marry?" As a young man full of dangerous steroids, your answer will probably be, "Ah, because her hair is like corn silk under an August moon; her lips are as rubies and her teeth, pearls; and her smile would make a dead man cry." This amounts to, "I'm horny," with elaborations. It is as it ought to be. The race continues because maidens are glorious, and striplings both desperate and unwise. Note, incidentally, that by the time October rolls around, corn silk is shriveled and brown. Why marry, indeed? In times past, marriage occasionally made sense. Life on a farm required two people, a woman to work herself ragged in the cabin while the man carried heavy lumpish things and shot Indians. Later, come suburbia, the man did something tedious in an office and the woman did two hours housework and stayed bored for six. It worked, tolerably. In the Fifties, nobody expected much of life. It generally met their expectations. And there was sex, though not enough of it  the scarcity being the propellant behind matrimony. Back then, before the miracle of feminism, women had not yet commoditized themselves. A lad had to pop the question before he got laid regular. Women controlled the carnal economy and, in a world that was going to be boring anyway, that was probably a good thing. At least kids had parents. Times change. Some advice to young fellows setting forth: First, forget that her lips are sweet as honeydew melon (though not, of course, green). It doesn't last. One of nature's more disagreeable tricks is that while men are far uglier than women, they age better. Remember this. It is useful to reflect in moments of unguided passion that, beneath the skin, we are all wet bags of unpleasant organs. Soon you will be a balding sofa ornament and she will look like a fireplug with cellulite. Once the packaging deteriorates, there had better be something to get you through the next thirty years. Usually there isn't. Prospects have improved for the single of both genders. Sex is nowadays always available. If you don't marry Moon Pie, which would be wise, you may get another chance when she comes back on the market with the first wave of divorcees. It's never now-or-never. Getting older doesn't diminish your opportunities. As you gain experience, you will recognize the tides, the eddies, the whirlpools of coupling  the urgency of the biological clock, the lunacy of menopause. Men by comparison embody a wonderful clod-like simplicity. As you ponder snuggling forever with Moon Pie, compare the lives of your bachelor and your married friends. The bachelors come and go as the mood strikes them, order their apartments with squalid abandon, drive Miatas or Harleys if they choose, and live in such pleasant dissolution as is consonant with continued employment. The married guy lives in a vast echoing mortgage beyond his means, drives sensible cars he doesn't like, and loses his old friends because he isn't allowed to hang out with them. Self-help books to the contrary, marriage does not rest on compromises, but on concessions. You will make all of them. Perhaps it doesn't have to be this way. But it is this way. Moon Pie has only one reason for marriage: to get her legal hooks into you. She doesn't think of it in these terms, yet, and she has no evil intentions. She just wants a nice quiet home in the remote suburbs where she can live uneventfully, raise progeny, and keep her eye on you. If you think surveillance isn't part of the contract, try going out late with your old buddies. Marriage is an institution founded on mistrust. If she thought you would stick around if not compelled, she wouldn't need marriage. She wants monogamy, at least for you and, with some frequency, for herself. She knows viscerally that you would prefer the amorous insouciance of an oversexed alley cat. You know it consciously. Marriage exists to control the male, until recently a good idea. Now, however, she can support herself, and doesn't need protection. She doesn't need you, or you, her. She will, however, want to have children. Women do. At which point, G-d help you. Given the schools, drugs, latch-keyism consequent first to working parents and then to divorce, and the cultural pressure on children to be slatterns and dope-dealers, reproduction is a gamble. You may not even particularly like them, or they, you. Nobody talks about this, but how many people do you know who hardly talk to their grown children? And you've just tied yourself into twenty years of raising them. The moment Junior enters wherever it is that we are, Moon Pie will have you screwed to the wall. She won't think of it this way, yet. She'll be delighted with the cooing bundle of joy, his little fingers, his little toes, etc. But divorce usually comes. The chances are two to one that she will file: Women are more eager than men to enter marriage, and more eager to leave it  with the kids, the house, and the child support. It won't be amicable, not after seven years. You will be astonished at how ruthless she will be, how well she knows the law, and how utterly hostile to divorcing fathers the law is. You don't understand how bad the divorce courts are. You probably don't know what "imputed income" is. You think that "joint custody" means "joint custody." Think again. Quite possibly you will have to support her while she moves with your kids to Fukuoka with an Air Force colonel she met in a meat bar. In short, marriage often means turning twenty-five years of your life into smoking wreckage. Yes, happy marriages exist (I personally know of one) and there are the somnolent marriages of habitual contentment or, perhaps, of quiet resignation. But the odds aren't good. Permit me an heretical thought. In an age when neither sex economically needs the other, in which women do not need protection from wild bears and marauding savages, not in the suburbs anyway, perhaps marriage doesn't make sense, at least for men. The divorce courts remove all doubt. A young fellow might do well to stay single, keep his DNA to himself, pick such flowers as he might find along the way, and live his life as he likes.

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To: Stand Watch Listen

Remember this. It is useful to reflect in moments of unguided passion that, beneath the skin, we are all wet bags of unpleasant organs. LOL!!!!!!



To: Stand Watch Listen

Quoth Tom Waits:



All my friends are married

every Tom and Dick and Harry

you must be strong

to go it alone

here's to the bachelors

and the bowery bums

and those who feel that they're the ones

who are better off without a wife



I like to sleep until the crack of noon

midnight howlin' at the moon

goin' out when I wanto, comin' home when I please

I don't have to ask permission

if I want to go out fishing

and I never have to ask for the keys



selfish about my privacy

as long as I can be with me

we get along so well I can't believe

I love to chew the fat with folks

and listen to all your dirty jokes

I'm so thankful for these friends

I do receive





To: Stand Watch Listen

Each one doing what is right in his own eyes.....live for self.... AGYG <----shaking head....it doesn't look good for our society when we leave young men with such advice.....



To: All

To: Stand Watch Listen

To: xsmommy

Yes, but some of us come in Really Great Bags!!!!!!



To: anniegetyourgun

Nice counterpoint. Thanks for the link...



To: Stand Watch Listen

One thing missing here. God. Christianity takes a whole different point of view. One lives for the benefit of God, his wife and children, not for himself. It is a matter of choosing one way or the other. One leads to life eternal, the other to eternal damnation.



To: Stand Watch Listen

I have to wonder what life gave Fred Reed in the package called marriage? Sounds like he got royally screwed and wants to believe everyone is going to receive the same raw deal. I just spent the weekend with some couples who are very happy, some of whom have been together going on 30 years. I'd say this Fred Reed fellow is probably a good candidate for suicide judging by some of his pessimistic musings.



To: Stand Watch Listen

Ah, the old "Why buy the cow when the milk is free" philosophy. To quote the German soldier on "Laugh In"; "Verrrrrrrryyy interesting... but stupid!" Thanks just the same, but we don't need any more self-centered, egotistical jerks in the world. We have met our quota. All filled up.



To: Stand Watch Listen

Marriage is the best institution for raising the next generation of humans beings.



To: A Ruckus of Dogs

Agreed. And at the same time, this guy is right about a lot of it. The only valid reason I can think of these days to get married is a sincere desire to begin a family. I used to think it was about something called "love" but, well, ya know how fragile and fleeting that can be...



To: Stand Watch Listen

beneath the skin, we are all wet bags Ohhhh YES! Silky 'WET' golden corn silk. (trembling all over)



To: MeneMeneTekelUpharsin

One lives for the benefit of God, his wife and children, not for himself. For sure but if living for the 'benefit' of God, wife and kids is not for himself then he has already lost. One MUST truely WANT and LOVE with JOY to benefit God, wife and kids. Otherwise one is only fooling himself.



To: Stand Watch Listen

"while men are far uglier than women, they age better" How old do I have to get before I become handsome? I'm 51 and time's running out. I'm ready to be a babe magnet, but for some reason the magic isn't evident. --Boris



To: anniegetyourgun

AGYG <----shaking head....it doesn't look good for our society when we leave young men with such advice..... It is a sad outlook on life, but I resectfully submit that it is also the reality of today. Sure, it's a crummy way to view things. But this view wouldn't be so prevelant if the laws and society didn't encourage the destruction of the family and the demonization of men simply because they have a "Y" chromasome and money that they can be fleeced out of. It is a fact that more than half of all marriages today end in divorce. It's a fact that more than 2/3 of the time, women are the ones filing. It's a fact that if they have children, she will get custody of his children, be forced from his home, lose most of what he has worked for and a large portion of what he will earn for many years. Perhaps you have been fortunate enough to not see this happen to many people around you. I know many people who have been happily married for 20, 30, 40, even 50 years. Those people come from a time where divorce was nearly unthinkable, where when you had problems in the marriage, you worked them out. Unfortunately, the generations that proceeded them live in a much different world. It's a world where a the laws and courts have been stacked in such a way that there is a financial incentive for one person, usually the woman, to have the other person in the marriage, usually the man, forcefully removed from his family. I can't tell you haw many times I have seen this happen because I've litterally lost count. These men may pass on advice like the author of the article does to his friends and possibly even his sons not out of spite or malace. When he sees how efficiently his life has been dismantled and how he HAD to take it, most men pass on this advice because they don't want to see others, especially his children, put through the wringer for the financial gain of a multi-billion dollar industry that profits from destroying lives.



To: Orangedog

There is too much profit in divorce.



Changes that need to be made:



1. Visitation must be fanatically enforced the same way

failure to pay dollars is made.



2. The defacto trade in value of the divoce must somehow be addressed. If you divorce it is not the responsibility of the other party to ensure your standard of living. (consequence of feminist attitutes, View the divorce as a financial bankruptcy of the relationship.)



3. Community property must be eliminated.



4. Infidelity must be a consideration of divorce proceedings. Do not eliminate no fault, just consider the infidelity and its cause in that particular relationship. I remember reading a case where witholding martital relations was intentional cruelty. (she was pushing for him to have an affair to better her position) Choices by both parties should have consequences.



5. Restrict judges and custodial spouses ablity to limit contact children have with the non custodial parent. In other words require written consent and a written plan of how visitation will be conducted if the move is approved.



6. The BIGGIE reward marriage. Eliminate absurd tax penalty for marriage. Reward married people with and without children. Reward marriage for milestones, ie, every 5 or 10 years means some form of lower tax benefit. Institute a surtax on single mothers who avail themselves of a spermbank. (Intentional single parent tax to be collected by the spermbank prior to insemination, they tax cigarets for "burdens" on society.)







To: Stand Watch Listen

I take a different view. But then, I also believe in God, homeschooling, abstaining from sex before marriage, family, and a lifetime commitment. And I know there are at least a few others out there who do as well.



To: Greeklawyer

4. Infidelity must be a consideration of divorce proceedings. Do not eliminate no fault, just consider the infidelity and its cause in that particular relationship. I remember reading a case where witholding martital relations was intentional cruelty. (she was pushing for him to have an affair to better her position) Choices by both parties should have consequences. WRONG! No fault divorce is the root of most of these evils. Marriage is meant to be forever. As such divorce should only be granted when adultery can be proven or when physical abuse can be proven to a jury. The member guilty of abuse or adultery loses everything. The children, home, assets and support go to the true spouse. If we raise the penalty for abuse or adultery to a exceedingly painful level, then people will work to maintain their marriages rather than deserting them. Right now marriage is a racket for the enrichment of evil women and divorce lawyers. This insanity must end. I do agree that marriage should be greatly encouraged but divorce must be just as greatly discouraged. God Save America (Please)



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