Marriage 2.0

The laws will not be changed. And I think you are smart enough to know that. Women are happy with Marriage 2.0.

Marriage 1.0 evolved over thousands of years as a method to restrict the sexuality of women. Under such a marriage contract, a woman could not easily commit adultery and still expect to gain custody and the associated child support and alimony. The children were considered to belong to the father. As such, Marriage 1.0 was patriarchal in nature as it did restrict female sexuality.

Marriage 2.0 is feminist in nature as it assumes the children belong to the mother, not the father. As such, under Marriage 2.0 a wife is free to have an affair once she grows bored of her husband. And there is little risk as she knows she will in all probability win custody of the children and gain alimony. This is why 70% of all divorces are initiated by women.

For men, the only smart choice is to avoid marriage. And we are starting to see marriage rates drop as men realize there is absolutely no advantage and legal protections for men under Marriage 2.0.

I have a great deal of sympathy for men such as my father, who married under the 1.0 rules and were divorced under the 2.0 rules. They never imagined that no-fault divorce and lifetime alimony would become the cultural norm three decades after they said “I do”. Feminism made it more profitable for their wives to divorce them than to remain married.

There are many, many men who have seen what the system did to their fathers, uncles, and elder brothers and who will never marry under ANY set of laws. They know that women are a majority of voters and that they can rewrite the laws whenever they damn well please.

The true importance of what has happened is that *rule of law itself* has been sacrificed upon the altar of feminism. Women don’t seem to realize that they’ve effectively created a romantic anarchy by deep-sixing five thousand years of legal precedents and customs. Nice job, girls. I hope you enjoy chaos.

Marriage 2.0 will never revert back to Marriage 1.0. Let it be.

Why get married? If you want a monogamous relationship, why do you need to sign a contract?

Stay single, stay happy. A man needs a wife like a fish needs a bicycle.

Here is the truth about Marriage 2.0, neither a wife or a husband has any recourse if their spouse cheats or unilaterally decides to leave the marriage. A man can trade his wife in on a younger model after 30 years of marriage and his wife has no legal recourse.
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Usual feminist-lite BS. No legal recourse? 50% of everything and then some is “no legal recourse”?

Marriage 2.0 has destroyed marriage. Men gain absolutely nothing but liability by getting married. Marriage rates will continue to decline. Men should NEVER get married in the United States.

It cannot be fixed, Your somewhat standard feminist argument that, gosh, men are longing for the patriarchy, such dummies, attitude is dominant among women today, and women control the political system. Any politician who does not kow-tow to them is ruined.

You seem to be blissfully unaware of the false sex abuse industry; the false domestic violence industry, men ordered to pay for the rest of their life to adulterous women more money than they earn, even as most people losing their jobs in the recession are men who get no reduction in ordered payments when their job is eliminated; millions of men who are ordered to send money to women who refuse access to their own children with impunity in open violation of court orders. And, much more.

It is obvious why women are discussing such things. For 45 years, women have been scheming to destroy all of men’s human; legal; constitutional; and civil rights, all for the benefit of the chillrun…

Now that men have realized that marriage is a stupid idea, and the pain has been brought back to the women who helped cause it, now you want to talk.

Women would refuse to talk — though for all practical purposes you are still not really listening, are you? — forever as long as men continued to obediently jump into the somewhat suicidal marriage bed.

By the way, I have been married for 34 years to a Mexican woman, and am currently advocating just that for any man will listen. Not long ago, the UK census folks announced a million male Brits are missing, and they have no idea where they are.

But, please carry on as you have been doing for 45 years. We men are content with our decisions to expat or avoid marriage. All is well with us.

Women have destroyed marriage.
What is left of it is a pile of burning ashes.

Why do you want to resurrect the dead ????

Leave the dead where they lie and get a life.
Us fish do not need you anymore than you bicycles need us.
We are now two entirely different species.

Go your own way: we will go ours.
All is well and fine that way.

If you have any doubts as to why men are not getting married – and SHOULD not – Google these 3 names: Dr. Tim Emerson; H. Beatty Chadwick; Mary Winkler. Men: DON’T GET MARRIED – it will destroy you.

VAWA, IMBRA and a whole host of other legislation are the reasons for Marriage 2.0 being a permanent fixture of the American social consciousness, ask NOW what their plans are for the future and how much more radicalized can gender relations become, you’ll get a frightening answer to that question.

You asked the question how men and women can come together to collectively change these laws?. The answer: They can’t, the laws are there at the behest of feminists with the silent support of many women who don’t see that there is a problem at all. Why change something which isn’t broken will be the reply?

As marriage rates fall into a black hole so will other forms of relationship such as cohabitation. These “unconventional” relationships are scheduled to be redefined into the Marriage 2.0 legal umbrella if they haven’t already done so, “to protect the rights of women in any relationship”. As less and less men get married, most women and especially single moms will need to grab other sources of income from any man near them with whom they may or may not have a relationship, this means any man who has the ability to pay. If you cohab, a guy can now get sued for child support, even if they’re not his kids! Even if he’s not married to the girlfriend but merely living under the same roof (proof of relations is dependent on what the woman says and not the man so there may not even be conjugal relations involved, courts will believe the woman over the man in a great majority of the cases).

Women will soon want universal child support legislation passed which taxes everyone to support their children(if they choose to have any) regardless of their marital status, as sources of private financial support dry up(ie as the marriage $$$ pipeline disappears, much like oil).

Men have absolutely nothing to gain from getting married in the West and under Western laws.

I’m a lifelong bachelor, I haven’t and won’t go near a western woman and haven’t done so in 20+ years, the risks are too high the penalties for failure are too high and the rewards minimal. If I were to look for a relationship and marriage it would be in another country as IMBRA prevents me from even considering it in the US.

I am very happy indeed to see that men have awakened, at long last.

As far as relationships are concerned, women have made their bed. The only logical thing to do for them now is to sleep in it.

No man should ever consider marriage in the West.

I say, with deep emphasis, that Western women must be abandoned.
They must not be allowed to reproduce under any circumstance.

I agree with compulsory abortion for them.

Women are not necessary.

Rather than renounce, American Women prefer to live in a PSEUDO reality that’s created, legislated, and maintained by a bankrupt government that’s determined to be unfair to boys & men in every area of modern society. Thus, American Women will receive zero benefit from my labor. You want to spit in our faces after we’ve fought and died to create, maintain, and improve the very civilization you so enjoy? So you can treat us like this? Well, you know what they say about payback ….

Marriage Strike. Relationship Strike. Baby Strike.

You’ve got a lot of work to do, empowered GRRLS!

THE MEN HAVE LEFT THE BUILDING.

Oh, BTW, I’d like to thank the Feminists for setting men free and enslaving women. Hilarious!

I’ve read a few articles and columns such as this one that attempt to reframe the debate in terms of marriage 2.0 being bad for both men AND women.

This is inaccurate, and divorce stats bear that out. When 70% of divorces are filed by women, and most of the remainder are only filed by men who have had their hands forced by one means or another, women get custody well over 80% of the time, and 99%+ of people in jail for failure to pay child support are men, it is patently obvious that women are the hand-down beneficiaries of the new marriage paradigm.

I think this is just the beginning of the end of an era. We are living in a society that is unsustainable, and the excess that allows women to get paid a fair amount of money to write about themselves and their needs in advice columns, The New Yorker, etc., is fast disappearing.

At the point where most men are either too poor to support families, whether married or not, or unwilling to risk marriage, women will face a far more difficult reality than they currently imagine.

The question really should be: “who’s going to pay for all this?”

The problem isn’t women, and more than the problem is men. We are the same species one and all, and any given one of us is as likely to continue our lineage on Earth with sons as much as we are likely to continue it with daughters. We must be careful not to let our frustrations turn into outright misogyny or misandry.

I understand the battle-scars carried by many guys of our generation, and the feelings of betrayal that it brings. But we must realize that the enemy isn’t the “other-sex”, but the ill-conceived laws & norms, often propped-up at the financial gain of hypocritical politicians and lawyers. (sometimes the same person as you will see in the below linked article).

Consider the case of the feudal alimony-laws in Massachusetts. Read the expose on it by Boston Magazine’s July-2009 issue.

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/till_death_do_us_pay/

It is reported that these laws aren’t only cheating good men (their only crimes was to say “I do”) out of a fair chance at a free and fair life, but they are ruining good hardworking women too. This is an outlier example, but these are laws so perverted and out of control that they have taken to garnishing the wages of 2nd wives, to pay the alimony due to the 1st wives. Even when the 1st wife was the one who cheated-on, abandoned, and divorced the hapless husband in the first place; sometimes as long as 30 years ago.

Of course the real female-victims of such laws aren’t the 2nd-wives, but a much bigger group. The hundreds-of-thousands of Gen-X, Gen-Y, and Millenial Women who are cheated out of a fair-shot at getting married and bearing families during their reproductive years. The discussion thread for the BM article has links to CDC-data showing how new-marriage rates in Massachusetts have crashed over the last two decades to the lowest in the US. Bay State Men are apparently hearing the real life stories of their coworkers, friends, and relatives and saying “No Maam! Thanks But No Thanks” to marriage.

So while on the surface it looks like the feudal laws are stealing from John to pay Mary, what they are really doing is stealing from Jane to pay Mary.

A whole generation of modern, career-oriented, productive women are being robbed of their destinies of having loving families of their own, so that a bunch of entitled alimony-queens who refuse to work can live life like an endless episode of Sex and The City.

Men and Women – we must band together to fight Marriage 2.0. It may not happen in our generation, but it’s way overdue for an upgrade.

Consider the scenario of a married couple in their home, who may, on occasions invite male friends into their home. Should the wife form a ‘relationship’ with one of those male friends, the husband may be expelled from his home, have that home and much of his life savings and a share of his pension confiscated and given to the wife to ‘protect’ her. He may also be excluded from his children’s upbringing, and will be forced to pay money from his labours, into that new ‘family’. The law will offer that man nothing by way of protection. The visitor to the home has more rights than the husband in his own home.

Although the above scenario is rare, the fact that it COULD happen with the full weight of the State pressing down on you is a classic indictment of marriage v2.0 .

Never marry….men…it’s over!

David: I think Matthew Winkler would disagree with you.

What category does the woman who has been married,homemaker and followed all the rules for 34 years to have a husband leave fall into. Gave up a career to raise family and be a wife so husband could better his career.
Doesn’t she deserve some protection?

I understand why women will take all that they can get, it’s human nature to press an advantage. I just don’t understand why they feel no sense of responsibility for the world that their sons will have to live in. Ask a teenager what an eight track is, and you will see a glimpse of the future of marriage. They are growing up in a world with divorced parents who are children of divorced parents. Their children will grow up not knowing what marriage is or why anyone would have done such a strange thing. If things stay they way they are, who could blame them?

The problem with marriage 2.0 is that divorce 2.0 still has major components of divorce 1.0, without the features of marriage 1.0 to balance things out. We’ve hung on to the alimony, but forgotten the dowry. We’ve told our elders to but out, we’ll make our own marriage match, then we’re surprised that the arrangement that we got into is unfair on disolution.

It seems that fundementally, the war between the sexes is an issue of expectation. Maybe Marriage 3.0 should start out with a contract that addresses the issues and sets expectations. Alimony is not a big deal, if you agreed to it and got what you deserved in exchange. Your ex getting the kids and child support and letting you visit “her children” twice a month should be no big deal, if that was your expectation as well. Instead of a marriage license, we could go back to having a marriage contract. A contract laid out by experienced people who know what can happen, guiding the star crossed kid who can’t imagine things going wrong.

If my fiance presented me a contract that said that she would get alimony if we divorced, regardless of the reason, we wouldn’t have gotten married. If she presented me a contract that said that she’d eliminate me as a parent if we got divorced with kids, we wouldn’t have had kids.

Who cares?

Marriage is just like dinosaurs: extinct!

Any man who even considers signing this contract today, is clinically brain-dead.

Feminism will die but not without bringing our society down with it. In the meantime, enjoy your freedom pals, for it’s us that feminism has “liberated”.

Bella – Under Marriage 1.0, you *would* get your protection, as what your husband did would be Abandonement. Adultery, Abandonement, Abuse … these all lead to that other scarlett-letter word … Alimony. These were all tied together in Marriage 1.0, and rightfully so.

However under Marriage 2.0, what can (and does in 75% of cases) happen is the wife is the one who decides to take a hike after 34 years (sometimes as little as 8 years). She wants to leave her husband, and go lay cabin-boys on cruise trips for the rest of her life. What happens with new laws, is that the unwitting & unwilling (now-ex)husband is forced by the State to bankroll your new adventure on the high-seas. You jump from cabin-boy to cabin-boy, while old chumpy ex-hubby is under threat of imprisonment to fund the whole adventure. Isn’t Marriage 2.0 grand?

Ciao Bella. Yes, in that case she deserves protection. However, let’s reverse it. Say a husband worked hard for 34 years, was a good provider, faithful, stable, not abusive, etc. If his wife decides to walk out, that’s fine – she’s not a prisoner and she should leave, but BUT NOT DEMAND ANY GOODIES because this was HER DECISION (for better or worse, remember?). However, when this happens today in the “real world” (as it does, frequently), the wife who CHOOSES a divorce (often having an affair) gets the house, kids, exorbitant child support, etc. (and note that the HUSBAND PAYS THE TAXES on CS, and not the wife, who is RECEIVING the money). Further, the wife will (at the urging of her lawyer) often accuse her husband of abusing her (and sometimes the kids) and take out orders of protection against him (the wife’s allegations are usually believed by the courts which are heavily biased against men). The husband will frequently never see his kids again (as he’s been “abusing” them), sometimes goes to jail, and gets a police record which often results in his being fired. He now has no money, and can’t pay the CS. Presto, you’ve just killed the goose that lays the golden eggs, and you’ve created a “deadbeat dad” (a term which I hate). Clearly this is not “fair,” but more important, it doesn’t even make sense. Good men are being destroyed in America (as in going to PRISON, becoming homeless, getting immersed in hopeless debt) all the time, and their biggest crime is saying “I do.” If you don’t believe me, Google the name “DR. TIM EMERSON,” and read his heartbreaking story.
MEN: DON’T GET MARRIED – IT WILL DESTROY YOU!!!

I would like a show of hands. How many of the men who posted here have actually been through the divorce process? How many of you have formed opinions about divorce laws and marriage based on stories you’ve heard from your male friends?

I’d wager money that very few of you have been through the process and are commenting based on personal experience.

You talk about 70% of all divorces being filed by women. What you don’t talk about is why a large majority of those women are filing for divorce.

I have the distinct advantage of communicating with both men and women who are going through a divorce.

Over the last 3 years I’ve received emails from 3,429 women, all going through a divorce. Seventy eight percent of those women filed for a divorce because their husbands had left them for another women.

Their husbands had cut off funds, was out having a grand old time with his new sweetie and spending large sums of money on her.

These women had filed for divorce because they were left with no other choice. They had to protect themselves and with no-fault divorce laws they get very little protection from the courts.

You can come here and spew your venom about women but you are doing it on a website run by someone who communicates with women and knows first hand that not only men are harmed by “marriage 2.0″ but so are women.

I rarely hear from men who are going through a divorce. I did hear from one from England who had found a new love and wanted advice on how to break the news to his family.

And there was the guy who had started communicating with his old high school sweetheart. Seems she was his “soul mate” the one he should have married to begin with and he was concerned about the cost to him if he divorced his wife.

I’ve read every comment here and so far I’ve read very few that were intelligent and made with full knowledge of what “marriage 2.0″ means to both men and women.

Here is the problem. There are both men and women who aren’t interested in working together to change the laws. Their only interest is anger, playing the victim and holding onto a poor, poor me attitude.

Peter, you are right, under Marriage 1.0 women were protected…so were men.

I don’t know where you get your statistics as far as 75% of women filing for divorce do so, so they can cruise the world sleeping with cabin boys.

You need to do some more research. A divorced woman’s income declines by 38% while a divorced man’s income increases by 43%. Those were the last statistics I read on the subject of who benefits more financially from divorce.

Really guys, if you are going to post a comment shouldn’t you get your facts straight first? Your arguments don’t hold water because they are not based in fact they are based on emotions.

And, if you think the problem is western women talk to military men who have married eastern women only to find that they were used as a ticket to the states and then dropped like a hot potato once their subservient eastern wife became an American citizenship.

The main difference I see between men and women who have been harmed by the new marriage 2.0 is that women work through their anger and get on with their lives. Men hold onto their anger and as usual want to blame a woman for their predicament.

Maybe that is why, as some of you say, women control the laws. Instead of stewing in their own juices women get over it and get out and do something about what they feel is unfair treatment.

I feel sure that when no-fault divorce laws are eventually changed it will be because women took the bull by the horns and made their voices heard.

That is the great thing about us western women but it is also the thing that scares you guys. Western women evolved. Judging from the comments left on this post there are a few western men who didn’t manage to keep up.

Cobalt,

Do you have any statistics to back up your claim that men are being destroyed?

How many men went to prison last year for non-payment of support? How man lost their homes to a woman who had cheated? How many had abuse charges filed against them?

You are basing your argument that men are being destroyed on the story of Dr, Tim Emerson…one man?

Let’s take a look at Emmerson, what he did and how he got into the position he is in.

His wife had an affair and filed for divorce. He threatened to do physical harm to the man his wife was having an affair with.

STUPID, STUPID thing to do on his part. Anyone with any common sense knows that if you threaten to do physical harm to someone you put yourself in a position of being arrested or having a restraining order issued.

On top of the threat he is a man who owned over 30 guns. I’m sure, Cobalt that if some man who owned that many guns had threatned your life you would let it ride, not say a word and get on with your every day life. NOT!

Then his idiot wife storms into his medical practice with their small child and refused to leave. Did Dr. Emerson call the police? Not before pulling a gun on his wife, in front of his small child.

Another STUPID, STUPID thing to do. If Dr. Emerson had used some intelligence in dealing with his cheating spouse instead of making threats and pointing guns he would not be in the position he is in today.

What happened to Dr. Emerson had nothing to do with his wife cheating or no-fault divorce laws and everything to do with the fact that he went off half-cocked, made threats to someone’s life and waived around a gun after having a restaining order against him.

His situation is not indicative of what happens to the average man whose wife cheats and files for divorce. Why? Because the majority of the men who face what Dr. Emerson faced choose to make logical choices and behave in a way that works for them, not against them.

To hold him up as an example is ludicrous, unless you hold him up as an example of how to bury yourself if you are going through a divorce.

Cathy, you are cordially invited over to the MGTOW forum for a stimulating debate. Click on this link:

http://mgtow.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general

You may start your own thread of course, or you may post on the thread called “Cathy: please post here.” Hope to see you there.

Cathy, I have responded to your questions on the MGTOW forum.

“I’d wager money that very few of you have been through the process…”

Right there, that statement is indicative of the condescension men face when telling women like yourself what the REALITY really is.

Yes, there are bad men who leave their wives for younger women. But those men are blamed and evicerated for such behaviour.

When a woman cheats on her husband, it’s “his fault” for driving her into another man’s arms.

The difference is, the full force of the State destroys the man for his poor behaviour, while financially rewarding the woman for her brutal behaviour. HOW DO YOU NOT GET THIS? This is what men are trying to tell you and one of the many reasons men are angry.

Cathy,

So much BS, so little time.

But, let’s concern just two of your points:

“You need to do some more research. A divorced woman’s income declines by 38% while a divorced man’s income increases by 43%. Those were the last statistics I read on the subject of who benefits more financially from divorce.”

While technically true, I suspect that you know that this is only “taxable incomes” being considered. Men typically pay nearly a third of their taxable incomes towards child-alimony (it’s not really child support since the women has zero accountability for what SHE does with that money), and are taxed even on that which they pay.

Woman, on the other hand, are NOT taxed on the child-alimony they receive — thus it isn’t considered a part of their taxable incomes. the reality is that women typically end up with more money — even if they have lower taxable incomes. But, I sure you already knew this.

“I rarely hear from men who are going through a divorce.”

I think I know why this is the case. Having read through the two other entries that are link to this one, while you do make some effort to conceal your anti-male biases, they never-the-less show through quite plainly. What man would write to a an obviously embittered divorcée who tends to place most blame on men for advise?

I’ll leave the rest of your BS response to others to clarify.

The main issue, Cathy, is that marriage 2.0 is disposable. Sure, guys leave their wives and trade up. So do women. However, you’re making it sound like male adultery is the leading cause for divorce, but when I went through my own divorce, my LMFT told me that the “walkaway wife syndrome” is actually the leading cause of divorce. Women get bored and want to move on to something else, and the law subsidizes their decision to do so due to the overwhelming presumption of mother custody, coupled with child support standards that clearly incorporate an alimony element into them (if you are keeping the child in the same standard, you are de facto keeping mom in the same standard, which means de facto it is alimony).

If we want to fix the system, one place to start is to switch custody so that there is a strong, rebuttable presumption of shared custody — it can be rebutted by demonstrated abuse, addiction or other factors that clearly indicate one spouse is unsuitable for shared parenting. I would think the preferred arrangement would be for the children to remain in the residence and for the parents to alternate the time *they* spend there, so that there is continuity and the least disruption for the kids. It would also mean much less child support paid to one or the other spouse, because most expenses would be shared relating to the residence and the children, and that sharing could be based on income share.

If we were to make that fairly simple change, divorce rates would decrease significantly, because far fewer women would opt for divorce if they were not assured of getting full custody over their kids and a nice child support check. And, for those couples who still would divorce, the impact on the kids would be much less than today’s winner take all system of family law.

Of course, such proposals have been made to legislatures in a few states. Do you know who has blocked them, Cathy? NOW. That’s right, the feminist groups are *against* shared custody. They bring out a parade of terribles, mostly about the kinds of things that a rebuttable presumption would actually allow to rebut the presumption, but in reality the underlying reason for their opposition is a simple one: power. Under the current system, women control family law. Women win divorces routinely, because she who wins custody is she who wins the divorce, simply put. And the feminist groups will be damned if they will allow that to be changed, because it would be a real and tangible loss of power for women.

So I expect, Cathy, that we will continue to stumble along under the insane rules we have, and marriage will continue its slow but seemingly inexorable decline. Yes, you’re right, men are angry. But you’re wrong in thinking men have not evolved — we have. We have also adapted to the new system, the one that the feminists pushed through the legislatures in the 70s and which, even today, they see as a major victory for women (no fault divorce). Men have evolved to the new system, and are increasingly avoiding marriage and children altogether. Expect that trend to continue. I doubt that the laws will ever be substantially changed, simply because the vested feminist interests are deadset against it, and are more politically powerful than the people who think that the law needs reform.

Divorce myths debunked by a neutral source:
http://www.divorcesource.com/CA/ARTICLES/peter1.html

Cathy: here is your show of hands!

I never got divorced, because I am not stupid enough to get married or have kids in the US

Several of my friends did though, in EVERY case the woman initiated the divorce. In one case, she was gleefully explaining over lunch how she was framing her husband on fake DV charges, even though “he’s a great Dad”.

One of my male friends nearly committed suicide, after being separated from his kids (that he loved more than life itself) and completely ruined.

I don’t think that the cases I witnessed are special. I could cite statistics, but others can do it better..

Cathy, you can keep lying and spinning but the truth is coming out! Hundred of thousands of men have been pushed to suicide, millions have been evicted from their houses, who knows how many are rotting in jail, and billions (if not trillions) of dollars were stolen from men. YES, WE ARE ANGRY!

Cathy,

If you’re still checking this thread, there’s an excellent piece of analysis by novaseeker on his blog (http://novaseeker.blogspot.com/2009/07/what-young-men-want-redux.html).

I believe you will find it both level-headed, and balanced as to the way men see marriage (Marriage 2.0) and how they prefer it to be.

You guys ask what a man gets out of marriage? How about someone to clean up after him(women still do more housework than men even if they work) deal with his kids, increase his mental health and lower his stress.

kb – “You guys ask what a man gets out of marriage? How about someone to clean up after him(women still do more housework than men even if they work) deal with his kids, increase his mental health and lower his stress.”

Please!
Not that old canard again!

If you’ll take the time to go back and check out those stories about women doing more housework, what you will consistently find is that housework is (conviently, for the woman’s POV) narrowly defined to include only in-door cleaning, cooking, and child care. That jobs that men overwhelmingly do – lawn mowing, snow-shoveling, car maintenance/repair, home maintenance/repair/remodeling, even taking the trash cans to the curb (and many others) are always treated as men’s hobbies when those female-centric “studies” are conducted.

As a married man with a very busy wife, I do (more then) my share of the “housework” (plus all my “hobbies”), and I can tell you without reservation that with the exception of dealing with young children and crying babies (which I’ve done plenty of), my hobbies are far more difficult that any of the rest of the “housework” stuff.

And, sure, a wife helps a man’s mental health and stress levels – provided that the marriage is good. Still, plenty of men do not enjoy either a good marriage, nor the benefits you suggest.

Further, those work both ways. As I mentioned, my wife is a very busy person, thus it is I who more-often-than-not who is the one who’s helping relieve her stress and help with her mental health.

And, while women do benefit men in marriages, the question remains, at what (potential) cost? Many men will tell you that all the benefits they enjoyed during marriage were no where close to what they ended up losing after the marriage ended. That’s why so many men do not even consider marriage any longer.

BTW, I couldn’t help but notice that your list of benefits included neither love nor intimacy. Should I read something into that?

Hello,
Please, I need serious help, so where do i turn? I am (was) a conservative Christian dad, 42 years old, who spent 13 years raising my daughters as a stay home dad. My wife, who worked , and did her own thing decided she wanted out after 19 years of marriage. Now, since i was the primary parent and caregiver, my wife decided that in order to keep the kids, and get them away from my pro God, Pro life, Pro marriage values that I had brought my daughters up with….. she came up with a evil plan, using my sister, her neighbors, and a mutual friend to call the police and tell them i had tried to contract for the murder of my wife, daughter, sister, and mutual friend. ….well, the police believed them, i was arrested and charged with 3 felony counts of criminal solicitaion……. I went before a grand jury and the case was no-billed because they lied, and were caught. I was suing my x-wife and her friends for 4 million dollars. I was forced to drop the lawsuit due to the mounting legal costs. BUT STILL, even though the grand jury no billed the case, and the charges were dismissed, I still cant see my kids, and my oldest daughter was told i wanted her dead. My x-wifes’ whole family is on my side, and everyone knows(except the courts) she set me up in a God aweful way. My x has lied to child protective services saying I’ve tried to molest my daughters, and many , many, many, many other untrue things that have ruined my relationships with my daughters, and my life.
She has been instructed on how to create a paper trail about me, and then use it in family court against me. My 8 year old just wants to be with her dad, the parent who raised her since birth, but my x is still riding her lies, and even though they have been caught lying, the courts, c.p.s., the law guardian and others believe what ever she says.
I am now out of money to fight ! my bail was set at 25,000$, my parents, and family members have bore the brunt of this.
There is SO much to this legal kidnapping and abduction of my kids, other dads out there MUST know……. that no matter what, they dont have any rights, And the thing about innocent until proven guilty is a farse. Also 95% the people who prosecuted me(including the D.A.) were women! ?? Go figure.
….Since all this happend, I owe more than 60,000$ in legal, medical, and many other fees. I am currently on welfare, do to me losing my job, and my reputation being TOTALLY destroyed. Also I just applied for SSD. I aslo found out she’s taking me to court for owed child support??? You cant get blood from a stone!!
Besides the fact the courts look the other way when my x violates something issued by the courts, which she continues to do.
I have been diagnosed with PTSD resulting from the arrest, the treatment from the DA, and in the manner the police dealt with me, not to mention the insane antics of my x. They’ve destroyed me in every way possible. My family and I want something done. We will even go on television if we have to!
I have all the legal docs. police reports, and ALOT of witnesses…. But it does not matter one bit!!

So what I gather from your comments, Cathy, is that a man who learns to avoid marriage by listening to the experiences of other divorced men is an idiot, because obviously the majority of divorced men not only had it coming to them but nearly all of them are actually responsible for their own situations? Is that what you’re telling me?

You seem to think that statistics of any kind trump the experiences of those around us, and that we should never listen to advice coming from the divorced men we know, because they are biased and their views and opinions are somehow made irrelevant by this.

Of course they’re freakin’ biased! These are men who genuinely believe they were destroyed by the system, and since I too am a man, I’d be stupid to ignore all of the horror stories I hear from the men around me! They’ve had to learn the hard way, but I don’t have to.

Such as…

A man whose wife (the accountant of the family) started banging every thug and drug dealer in the city and spent my friend’s money on who knows what instead of paying off the mortgage and his pickup, leaving him with a foreclosed house and a repossessed truck and a stack of credit card bills so high he’ll never dig himself out. She, of course, is unaffected by all of this, and he still gets the pleasure of paying her alimony every month.

Or how about another friend who’s wife started banging a cop, and when she decided to leave, took her cop thug’s advice and filed a restraining order on the grounds of DV. He wound up with no house, no kids, his rights trampled on, and the cop now lives in his house with his ex.

Let’s talk about my uncle who is rotting in jail for a number of horrific charges made against him by his nasty ex-wife, most of which are obviously false, but thanks to the fact that she’d taken all of his money before she left him, he couldn’t afford to hire an attorney that could have given him a solid defense case. If he’d never married her, he’d be fine today.

And let’s see, we should mention the case of another relative who’s wife embezzled money from his company, cheated on him with one of his employees, and then divorced him, getting the house in the process and driving him out of business. He’s still paying child support, and he’s not been married to her for fifteen years!

Welcome to reality Cathy. That’s just a couple of examples from the men in my own life. Now I’m supposed to trust the mindless shaming language of pathetic female demagogues with a cause to sell, over the experiences of men who I know and trust?

I don’t think so.

Smart men learn from the mistakes of others, and the biggest mistake made by every broken man I know was to say, “I do!”

Me; I’d rather die alone than live with that axe hanging over my head. Threats of poverty, homelessness, and imprisonment by the government are enough to make me say Never.

Government has no business being in the marriage business. None whatsoever.

But Dan, you say, if marriage isn’t regulated by the government, what will happen to the women and children?

For The Children! will be the death rattle of our civilization!

Forget the women and the children. Not my problem anymore. I have no investment in it. Feminism has freed me from responsibility.

You women can start taking care of your own children. You can have your equality+ and your careers and let other women raise your children until all you are left with are drugged up, emotionless offspring who are strangers to you. You shut men like us out and made us irrelevant. You’ve taken us out of the equation.

Good job.

But now you get to suffer the consequences; you get to do it ALL–Alone.

I think you are very wrong.

You are right in limited circumstances such as when the children are all grown (or there are no children), but when there are children it simply is not true that “Marriage 2.0″ is equal.

What happens most of the time is that the wife takes the children and a good portion of the husband’s income (often for the better part of two decades). The “noncommitment” of the “commitment” of marriage thus hits men much, much harder in these cases — the most important cases. Men are devastated.

Marriage without commitment is not marriage. If a woman can just get up and leave merely because she decides her happiness lies elsewhere, then there is no marriage. The whole concept of marriage is commitment — at least until the children are grown.

There is another reason you are wrong — numbers. It is primarily women who exercise the “walk” option. You can debate why this is true but it is true. It is not done equally.

A man relies on a woman’s commitment tremendously. No sane man would have children expecting that they could be taken from him. Marriage 2.0 is a fraud — a total fraud.

The only one who is obligated to anything in the vast majority of the cases is the man. He has to keep his financial obligations yet the woman doesn’t have to keep any of her obligations. Equality? Baloney.

By the way, I speak from personal experience.

My wife had an affair with a drug dealer. He was living in my house with my children, driving my car, etc. within hours after I learned of his existence. I want go into the ugly details.

I know far more though than personal experience because I am a family lawyer. I have handled hundreds of divorces. I have not had one single case that I can remember where the man had a young sweetie. That is bull. It may happen but it is not the norm at all. When there is adultery, it is usually the woman who is adulterous. My theory is that women have far less to lose so they do it more. Also, their adultery is far more destructive of a marriage typically. A man gets his rocks off and goes home. A woman’s adultery usually leads to destruction of her feelings for her husband completely.

In any event, women deny their ex husbands access to their children, they have their husbands put in jail for child support (often that they cannot pay even if they wanted to), etc. Women harm men much more in divorces than vice versa. Most men just don’t act that way (other than in retaliation for her acts).

Divorce is a very ugly business and men are getting the brunt of it. By the way, if the divorce is not caused by the woman’s adultery, it is cause by something vague (happiness, satisfaction, etc.) — she just wants out.

Hey, men, this proves what I told you. Not only are men who marry in the Anglosphere fools, but men who try to talk to women about it, are even bigger fools.

Note the reference to Weitzman’s bogus statistics on the increase in standard of living for men,and decrease for women. Weitzman was proven probably ten years ago to have totally fabricated those figures, and other studies do not show the same results as her lies. She lied, and the whole nation ate it up. No wonder feminists think men are stupid.

Also, that preposterous statement that 78% of divorces are a result of male adultery. Even feminist studies, my daughter got her bachelors in Social work a few years ago, and it was in her feminist text book, showed that male adultery is not a major factor in divorce. Further, the marriages generally were not troubled at all.

I not only was divorced, but supplied free counseling services to over 1,600 men. I am very judgmental, unlike feminists who counsel women, and while a few men admitted they messed around, most of the problems were open adultery by women. As dogwild says, when a woman files for divorce, at least 80% of the time one must assume she has been sleeping with someone else.

Do not waste time arguing with Cathy. She has not a clue what is happening to men, and really doesn’t care.

Cathy, there is important information here. Increasingly large numbers of men simply don’t care. They don’t care what you think or believe. They don’t care what women believe or think or want. They are well aware that many men in the last 40 years have tried to discuss these issues with women such as yourself. And, all they got back was the same old,tired lies and hoaxes (which sadly you believe).

Was it Einstein who said people who continue to try that which has never worked while expecting different results are insane?

Census figures in UK, which is well ahead of the US in abusive laws, show that a million men are missing, and that incudes already a very large number of ‘imputed’ men, men who were not found but were assumed to exist.

I write from Mexico, and I have been married to my Mexican wife for over 34 years, so don’t bother with the usual canard that I am just a man who can’t get a woman.
i

Is it really the fault of one party when a divorce happens? It takes two to tango.

You are right Susan. It takes two to tango. But only one is ordered to make lifetime alimony payments.

Marriage 2.0 … didn’t know marriage was being versioned these days. Sounds like a piece of software and not a comitted union between 2 people. I am experienced at marriage and a unwanted divorce that I was forced to file for. I was married for 24 years to a wonderful man, then mid-life crisis struck him. He started seeing a woman he met in the bar room, 10 years younger than me and that was the beginning of the end. I am not saying that he was a saint before this either. He has strayed 3 times prior but I forgave and he said wanted to be with me forever. His little strays revolved around his drinking time, so I can give temp. insanity as his plea as to why it happened. I have always been faitful to my x-husband. I took my wife duties very seriously, even though I have always worked out side the home. I had respect for him and our marriage. All of our children (5, 1 mine, 3 his, 1 ours) are grown and adults now. We built a new house before he decided to stray this time. I found out about the affair this time. The other times he came to me and confessed after he broke it off. Something he never had to do because I wasn’t wise to the affairs. But he told me and asked for forgiveness and I gave it and learned to trust again. This time however, was different. This so called love of his life was my son’s, his step son, girlfriend and she befriended me. When I did find out about the affair, then the affair was flounted in front of me. He kept telling me he loved me and it would all work out. And I kept believeing him for a year. Yes, I gave this man that I loved, a whole year to come home. I did not ask for one red cent from him to pay ‘our’ bills (my bills, our joint bills, and the housing expenses) during that time. He lived in both places for a year. He paid for all of his mistress’s bills though. Maybe that was my mistake, allowing that to happen, but I didn’t just want to throw away the last 24 years either on a whim. After a year of making it on my own, I told him he needed to make his mind up. He said he was still confused as to what to do. I told him I was not and I filed for an unwanted divorce. I say unwanted because I wouldn’t be divorced today if he would of taken care of ‘his’ credit card bills. He defaulted on them all. I took mine and the joint ones to save my credit (which was well over 70% of ‘our’ debt). I never asked him for anything on any of that. His creditors were getting ready to put liens on the house and we both agreed to get it out of his name so they couldn’t. I think I was fair to him in the divorce … he got everything he wanted as far as the best vehicles, the best toys (atvs, pulling trucks (value $75,000, paid in full), tools, etc). I took what was left for vehicles and the house. I never asked for anything in the divorce as far as support. I even offered him medical/dental coverage for a year. THere’s alot of things I could of screwed him over on but I chose not too. I still love this man even after all the things that have happened. Would I take him back … the question is still unanswered. There is alot of emotional damage done this time around. I do not know if it’s repairable. But that doesn’t stop me from loving him still. So for all you bitter men out there that have been biten, there are some women out there that have been fair with there x spouses. So do not group us all into the bucket of money grabbing, back stabbing x’s. I certainly had all the reason in the world to be one and chose not to. And I have all the reason in the world to be down on the union of marriage, whether it’s 1.0 or 2.0 or some new version number, but I am not. I hope to be married again some day. I love being a wife and being part of a couple. I will not let a really bad experience cloud my feelings on the whole union of marriage. I wish some of you guys wouldn’t either. You’d probably make one hell of husband to someone that would love and appreciate you the way a husband should be.

Seems there are a host of folks that need to learn to forgive – themselves, and then others. Too many momma’s boys and daddy’s girls want to stay that way rather than be adults when they marry. The biggest hurdle in any relationship, and marriage in particular, is learning the #1 lesson – it ain’t all about you.

After reading all the mens comments its obvious that they will never get married. Marriage is dead? Are you people serious??! The only reason why you say this is most likely because no one wants to marry any of you there’s probably something wrong with you without a doubt. When you find the right man who is smart enough to know there is nothing wrong or bad when it comes to marriage then stick with him girls because it looks like there’s more jerks out there than I thought! Me and my man will be getting married soon yay me!! Thank god he’s not retarded!

To ‘Bella’ and ‘Cathy’: After 20 yrs of marriage to an ‘eastern’ woman which I chose over an American woman to avoid the ‘gimme this and gimme that’ crap. Well, my ‘eastern’ woman was the same except the addtional abusiveness (emotional and physical). So having a confirmed documented abuser, as I contemplate actually filing for divorce after moving out (finally) into my own apartment a year ago, I will have to pay an abusive person 1/2 of my military retirement, plus 40% of my job earnings aside from that. Thats enough for her to continue sitting on her duff while I continue to work as I have for many many years…and why should I get a 2nd job, to only give away 40% of it to this special someone? Geez, talk about ‘protection’ huh? Where the hell is mine? Her episodes of coming at me with a kitchen knive on more than one occasion becuase she didn’t feel she warranted attending couples counseling or anger management classes. Thank you American society for making me become a personal welfare agency until the day I die.

Phil, how is society responsible for you staying in a marriage with an abusive woman?

You had the choice to walk away from your marriage at the first sign of abuse. You chose not to walk. Now you are paying the consequences for the choice you made.

You were in the military, had a steady income and resources available to you. You were not stuck in an abusive marriage without the funds needed to get out. Why did you stay? And, why can’t you see that staying is the mistake you made?

The responsibility for the cost of your divorce lies squarely on your shoulders. Instead of blaming society do some navel gazing and own the position you’ve put yourself in?

In the english language or any language used by humans the feelings I have and wish to represent would not be properly said.

The fact of the matter is that this is life. Bad things in happen in life. I’m sure whether you’re a man or a woman you know that.

There are the unlucky and there are the lucky. But for everyone there is a start of hope.

Every choice you make creates your future. Even if it is negativity or positive.

You think marriage is dead? YOU’RE RIGHT

you think marriage is love, trust happiness and is spiritually fulfilling? YOU’RE RIGHT

What you need to look at is not blame. Don’t marry by all means, until you know who you’re getting married to. To those who marry in under a year of dating? Desperate. No matter how long you know someone you’ll never understand them fully. You need all the time you can get.

As for the law and cheating? We’re human. In my eyes we are just animals. We try to make laws and punishments for things that don’t make sense. We try to appear so smart and restrict everything while only pushing ourselves further into a hole.

Cheating? AGAIN we are only animals. Intercourse is a part of the human condition. If you’ve been with one person for a very long time and you’ve been busy with kids, work etc you don’t get what you once had. You need to spice things up TALK with each other constantly ask “what are you thinking? How are you feeling? How can I help? and of course I love you.”

a random comment something new and nice makes a world of difference.

I am always hurt to see that so many of you hold grudges in your hearts.. not just the men on this site but the women too. I can clearly see it.

Let go of your hate and anger. I doubt it will ever happen but if we could all just accept each other and learn to love the world would be a better place.

After all, each and everyone of us is a brother and sister to one and another.

Let your anger go.. let your pain go… look at the sky, stop ignoring it.. look at the vastness the unending beautiful earth beneath your feet. When you get caught up in hurt and anger it controls your life.

To those who will read this and understand I congratulate you. For those who can’t all i can do is hope you can feel the way we were all mean’t to feel. Loving yourself and communicating with others in an equal way.

I wish you all well.

You describe the people who are exposing the damage done by no-fault divorce as radical patriarchal men. Both genders are exposing it online, on TV and in books. Why the male-bashing?

We will never have equality in child custody cases until feminists stop trying to, and passing gender-biased laws. People who run abuse shelters – that receive VAWA domestic violence funding – have been doing the same. They’ve spent over 30 years using made-up factoids and myths to keep control over the almighty dollar.

As long as their propaganda continues, and 85% of children are in the sole custody of mothers, this will remain a gender issue.

Once they are forced to tell the truth, and once due process is established in every state in America – not just one – children will be able to enjoy equal access to both parents.

Cathy: “Do you have any statistics to back up your claim that men are being destroyed? How many men went to prison last year for non-payment of support?”

Cathy, read my articles. The bias against fathers is obvious, if you look for it.

Karl Hindle’s daughter has gone blind in one eye while he was vilified after false allegations of abuse. http://www.examiner.com/x-15873-Family-Rights-Examiner~y2009m7d4-Florida-Court-of-Appeal-filing-names-State-Dept-official-in-British-childs-abduction

His daughter was left in the care of her mother, after being illegally abducted to another country,. This after she tried to give her away to the family of and into the care of a pedophile.

This was all allowed by women in the State Dept. Karl’s ex and daughter were hidden by them while she was listed as missing and endangered. Karl still does not have custody of his daughter, after several international investigations have cleared him of any wrongdoing.

Watch for my next article…about a father who was TORTURED to near-death, over a false charge of child support arrears.

Cathy: Nice attempt to twist words there. I say thanks to society (in one aspect of my case – the military (Federal) law for 100% support of the spouse regardless of who did what to whom) for creating the automatic spousal support … for it was at and beyond the 10 years minimum requirement deal for a military spouse to be eligible for guarantee 50% of my retirement. You speak as an outsider. As a man trying to ’save a marriage’ I did everything I could to appease my supposed ‘other half.’ Meanwhile, I’d go to work with bruise/cut on my forehead or temple, scratches on arms, etc…only to receive the awkward looks and head shakes…had I been a female the man would have been turned over to local police custody, ben charged with unauthorized absence, further awaiting demotion, the accompanying demoralization, shame and pending dishonorable discharge, with an offense that stays on record for numerous years, if ever removed. You seem to discredit the male pride thing…the internal pain, … then there is California law = the 40% ruling. This whole business of man vs woman and blame-game kills me when one hardly ever see hear of ex-wives paying their ex-husbands alimony,… the husband has to pay money to the ex an amount which pacifies (excuse me, maintains the same lifestyle of the ex, regardless of their willingness to get out and get a job to support themselves. There has to be a line drawn which society addresses the guy’s situations, etc. This life shouldn’t be all about women’s “protection.” With equal rights for women, out the door went equal rights for men. What part of the word equal don’t lawmakers understand?

Wow! listen to yourselves! The proof is in the results. Women are out of control! Just tune into prime time TV. Desperate Housewives… “Cougars” Soap operas are on day and night. Its all about vendictive women getteing over on men for the fun of it. while destrying the fabric of our society. Kids with no one home going out getting pregnate, shooting up their schools ect ect ect…

and the screaming match continues…

I’ve seen both sides – men burned by women and women burned by men. Divorce certainly brings out the worst in people and, sadly, marriage does not seem to bring out the best.

I just know that I’m very glad I never made the mistake of getting married. Women here can rest easy knowing that there are a growing number of men who won’t inflict their awful selves on you. The best way to prevent divorce seems to be to never get married in the first place.

I don’t think Cathy realizes that men are on a marriage strike…it is widespread and deep among the next generation of men (those men in their 20’s and 30’s) in this country (USA). Marriage – it’s the end as we know it, and I feel fine. Many women also in their 20’s and 30’s realize that men will not marry and they also know exactly why – anti-male laws, marriage/divorce industry racket, etc. Thus, it must be concluded, that only golddiggers and immoral women would advocate marriage in its present form. For example, I simply told my girlfriend point blank I will not marry her and have no plans whatsoever to do such, and I did not even have to tell her why as she simply said “I don’t blame you”. With the final demise of marriage in its current form, you will actually see men and women having better relationships, living arrangements, etc., based on simple fair transactions without big brother government telling people how they should live, marry, etc. and conform to the societal engineers that plan their lives (i.e. men are wage slaves, women are dependents on government welfare). My girlfriend and I are just one out of many such people living without any type of government license, regulation, etc….ahh…the free market, deregulation, the invisible hand of Men Going Their Own Way. Marriage has gotten OWNED by MGTOW.

Thanks for the article, I think I’ll wait for Marriage 3.0, hopefully that will be a better version than 2.0.

Amen to words by ‘BelleofAtlanta’!

Predictable ‘Code Purple’ shaming-language by Krystal #43. Also known as The Charge of Sour Grapes.

She must be new to this marriage-vs.-nomarriage debate.

I find it interesting how passive / aggressive some of the women here become when you mention their undue privileges

Don’t want someone to crash your little slave-trade operation, right ladies?

Well, we do have girlfriends (I do) and yes we are marriage material (as a matter of fact, the most eligible of my male friends are the ones not wanting to EVER get married) – so keep your shaming tactics to yourselves!

All the insults and shaming tactics just confirm what IMO marriage has become in the west: a SCAM!

Smart men don’t marry!

Yep, you are right. Any man who would object to marriage as it is practiced today is obviously a loser who could never get a woman. Guilty as charged, your honor.

Oh, wait a minute. My Mexican wife and I just had our 34th anniversary in early July. How could I forget.

These insults are called shaming language, something which worked well for 4 decades, but now merely paints the woman as, um, er, not intelligent and has nothing to say.

Actually, we are starting marriage 3.0 I use a different name, I call it my Get The Hell Out program, as I type here in Mexico. I manage to convince about a man a month to leave the US. Not all of them are gone, because it takes time to make it happen, but it is a growing trend.

And, not long ago the census folks in UK admitted a million Brit males are ‘missing’. My beloved niece in Mexico City knows where a lot of them are though certainly not a million. And, they already ‘imputed’ hundreds of thousands of males they did not actually find.

You see, Kathy, you have marriage 2.0 because women refused to listen to the petitions of men for redress, for over 40 years. Petitions on reproductive rights for men; petitions on visitation rights; petitions on adulterous women getting everything as if they are innocent and it is the husband’s fault; petitions on financial court orders for men with employment problems; etc; etc.

Women told men to go pound sand, things are just how they are going to be. This was based on an insane belief that men would always continue to behave the same no matter how badly they are treated. Only when you women began to realize there really is a major marriage strike did writers like you even pay the slightest attention to men’s problems, then you try to shame us some more.

Now, that you have started paying attention, you still try to push your sorry claim that is is the misbehavior of men which causes divorce 78% of the time, though even feminist studies disprove that.

So, your last chance as a gender to re-admit men to the human race is passing you by. Marriage 3.0 is upon us. May you all enjoy your lives as cat herders.

Oh, by the way, did you know that many men have checked it out and you can indeed tell American Women by the angry look on their faces, from 50 feet away.

Gosh, I forgot to mention. One man who moved a month or two ago to Mexico after being exposed to my tales of the good life reported he doesn’t need to take his meds any more, and his angina is gone. Just this week he has reported the mole thingies on his face have started dropping off, which is really strange.

I suppose this is probably a result of a life with reduced stress, but responding in kind to 45 years of male bashing and insults, I prefer to say it’s a result of not being around American Women, heh, heh.

“These insults are called shaming language”

What insults? There has been one comment that I felt was offensive to the men who have commented here.

On the other hand EVERY comment made by a man on this thread has been offensive toward women.

Having a differing opinion and sharing that opinion is not an attempt to shame irlandes. It is just um, er an intelligent woman speaking her mind.

Is that the true problem? That a woman might have the audacity to not share your view of marriage and women?

What I wonder is, why you as an individual feel so belittled and degraded when a woman shares her opinion.

It is almost as if you feel you’ve been put in your place just because a member of the opposite sex has a different view of the issue than you do.

Are you sure it is marriage you have an issue with and not just women in general? Mexican, Western or any for that matter.

I would think that a man who has been happily married for 34 years would have better things to do with his time than post comments about the terrible state of marriage.

“Only when you women began to realize there really is a major marriage strike did writers like you even pay the slightest attention to men’s problems, then you try to shame us some more.”

What major marriage strike? MGTOW has 124 members. I wouldn’t call that a “major strike.” You guys are just stirring up some dust over there.

You spend most of your time spewing venom against women and none of your time talking about the issues you say are important.

Where is your organzation? Who amongst you is writing letters to local representatives and planning stategy?

If you’ve got a problem with the state of marriage and no-fault divorce laws get constructive and do something other than dog on women.

And if you will reread the blog post I wrote, you will see that it is about the problems of men AND women when facing divorce under no-fault divorce laws.

Cathy: the marriage strike is not an organized movement. It is the absolutely huge effect of millions of men making their own mind, one-by-one. I was on a marriage strike long before I knew what “marriage strike” meant. Most of my male friends are on a marriage strike even though they never heard the term.

From talking to my male friends (in a big liberal city) I can tell you that a good 50% will never get married. Not even if they met mother theresa herself, looking like pamela anderson and certified as a professionnal blow-jobber! My friends are professionnals making solid 6-figures, so am I.

The marriage strike does not have a central authority, a manifesto, an agenda or an office somewhere. It is not an organization, it is a social phenomenon.

As far as political action, I think something is slowly taking shape, but it will take time and things will get worse for men before they get better. My political action is to leave the US: I am 30 and hopefully will be able to retire by 35-40 in a foreign country of my choice, where men are not treated like dirt. The personal is political..

I think the term “marriage strike” is a misnomer and misleading. As Thomas points out, there is nothing organized about it; calling it a “strike” conjures up implications of some sort of organized work stoppage along with the notion that men will “go back to work” of marriage once things are settled.

Instead, I think “Marriage2.0″ is a bit like “new” Coke or the Edsel – a product which doesn’t have much of a market. You can see from the comments above that there are men who believe the current marriage laws are very slanted against them.

There is nothing new about this. We have been hearing for more than 30 years that “men won’t/can’t make a commitment.” With women openly referring to men as “cash cows” and saying they want exclusive claim on the cash milked from the man, and with news of celebrity divorces with huge settlements going to the wife being hailed as “payday” for the ex-wife, marriage continues to become progressively less attractive for men. The social pressure to marry is nowhere near what it was 40 years ago, so some men have decided to “just say no.”

I suppose that women could be totally oblivious to the level of man-bashing going on in the culture, but it would still baffle me how they could be. What you perceive as “men dogging women” is the inevitable end result of men getting sick of women bashing them, and treating them with utter hostility and contempt, and beginning to throw back some of the trash which has been and is being thrown at them.

If there were an actual “marriage strike”, things would actually be much simpler, a redress of grievances and a little bargaining in good faith could restore some sense of balance. However, a generalized view on the part of many men that marriage is a very bad deal for men, and women are the enemy, is a social change which is far more difficult to fix. Men who see marriage as an abysmal trap and women as full of a sense of entitlement have no need for activism – they simply avoid both.

And, BTW, to Krystal – I’m well aware that women do not need, want, or even like men – I’ve heard that from thousands of women throughout my entire adult life and have gotten quite used to the idea. For about 30 years, most of the women I was involved with didn’t seem to have heard that and were quite keen on the idea of marrying me, but I was far less keen on the idea of marrying them. Eventually the solution became to simply stop dating at all because marriage generally seems to be viewed as the end result of dating. There is no point in even getting on a train if you don’t want to go where it is headed, and find your fellow travelers distasteful.

As Thomas said – the personal is political and the political is personal.

Rutgers University Marriage Project is an ongoing annual study of US marriage-rates. They publish an update every few years on the national marriage rate. Here is a summary of their data:

FIGURE 1
Number of Marriages per 1,000
Unmarried Women Age 15 and
Older, by Year, United States:

1970 76.5
1972 77.9
1975 66.9
1977 63.6
1980 61.4
1983 59.9
1985 56.2
1987 55.7
1990 54.5
1991 54.2
1992 53.3
1993 52.3
1995 50.8
2000 46.5
2004 39.9

Folks can put their hands on their ears and go la!la!la! all they want. The data clearly shows a marriage-strike-like phenomenon. It may not be an organized movement with dues and a membership card, but it’s definitely happening.

To borrom a term from economists, this decrease in marriage rates is a secular trend and well established. We can all look forward to seeing many more “Where are all the good men?”, and “Why won’t he commit?” type of articles in Cosmopolitan magazine in the coming years.

“Over the last 3 years I’ve received emails from 3,429 women, all going through a divorce. Seventy eight percent of those women filed for a divorce because their husbands had left them for another women”

Cathy… I’m sure that these women have confided in you, but it would be simplistic to think that it represents anything other than women are comfortable sharing their issues with other women and you in this particular instance. You don’t have to read too far into this posting to see that you don’t have the same knack with men. You seem to draw heat even when you agree.

When I consider all of the divorces that I know enough of the details to form a reasonable opinion of the reason for the divorce, it doesn’t conform to your experiences. About 1/3 of them were splits with no infidelity involved. Almost all of them were pressed home by the wife wanting out. I suspect that the imbalances regarding finances and child custody and the other issues so vigorously discussed above had a big impact on why more women than men felt divorce was a solution.

The balance (2/3rds) of the divorces that I know involved a third party. Someone left someone for somebody else or divorced their partner because he or she is or was cheating. It is about 50/50 with men and women being just as likely to be stepping out. If you think about it, it makes sense. The 3,429 husbands in your example can’t all be sleeping with the same woman.

There is a marked difference in how each group handled it. The women seemed to build teams for support and the men seemed to go it alone. The women were noisy about it, telling everyone who would listen about their problems and their cheating husband. When they were the “cheaters”, the were very quiet about at that aspect, but noisy on the “issues” with their spouse as the reason for the divorce.

The other interesting thing about my little control group of divorced friends, family, and coworkers is that the cheaters were very likely to remarry (sometimes with disastrous results)and the cheated on were less likely to remarry. It doesn’t seem to gender specific. I think that perhaps the cheaters felt that marriage was OK, it was just the wrong person, so even though they couldn’t seem to stick to the vows, they were quite willing to do it all over again. The costs associated with the divorce (relationships, financial, status, etc…) were simply the price to be paid for getting away from that person, not evidence that marriage was fundementally unfair and in need of a new version number.

Puma,

I graphed the Rutgers project and there are some interesting trends. Mathematically, it says that unless something changes, marriage is doomed and the end is soon.

Starting in the mid 70’s, there was a free fall. The number of marriages was decreasing exponentially, but the rate of decline was slowing. In layman’s terms, if things continued, by 2000 or so, it would have leveled off and maybe even started to increase.

But things didn’t continue on the trend. In the mid 80’s the trend ended with a sudden drop and another exponential decline started, but this time the rate of decline was increasing. In layman’s terms, by as early as 2020, if the trend continues, the marriage rate would be ZERO and there is no statistical reason to expect that it would ever go back up again!

Of course, this is statistics and graphs, but it has the advantage of removing the he said/she said and the assignment of blame and points out what is happening. Marriage is broken, and the kids know it.

Since you deleted all my comments. I’ll leave this one to see where you truly stand. If you want men to be allowed to have equal rights and to be fathers.

PLEASE GO TO ACFC.ORG and sign the shared parenting petition.

I’ll be back to see if Cathy leaves my comment posted. We’ve been visiting here on a frequent basis. Let’s see what she does….

Cathy you outdated relic of the ignorant 1970’s, you just don’t realize how BIG the internet is do you?

Brian, I am a registered member of ACFC. I have a link to their site on my category, Equal Parenting which you can find on the left sidebar of the Divorce Support site.

There is a search bar at the right top of the my home page. If you do some searching for articles you will find many articles and resources for divorced fathers and men going through a divorce.

I deleted your repeated comments because your enthusiasm for the subject matter was having the opposite effect you were hoping for.

To be honest you were coming across as obsessed instead of passionate and rational.

Please search my site and you will see that I’ve been in favor of equal parenting for a very long time and also in favor of a change in divorce laws that have a detrimental effect on both men and women.

Contrary to what you may believe this is not a subject that is new to me.

Magnum Wrote:

“With the final demise of marriage in its current form, you will actually see men and women having better relationships, living arrangements, etc., based on simple fair transactions without big brother government telling people how they should live, marry, etc. and conform to the societal engineers that plan their lives.”

You are missing the obvious point. As fewer marry and more opt out, for less formal relationships, the laws are being tightened to define such relationships as de facto marriage. In many jurisdictions, the woman’s rights to a man’s property and income start after 183 days. This is without children. I know a friend who lost his house and a big proportion of his retirement income to such a gold digger. On day 184, she saw a lawyer and he was toast.

(59) Cathy Meyer says:

“These insults are called shaming language”

Its the same old BS. Men who are naturally wary of marriage (and the stats. show an ever increasing number are opting out) are “losers” and “unable to find a woman who will accept them”. The opposite is true. Such men are good prospects who do not want to risk all for such a low probability of success.

Then you claim that a site only has 141 members. Who cares? This is only one very small selection of such men. In fact, most men don’t obsess about relationships like women do. They just get on with their lives and make a success of them. Being married is hardly a prerequisite for that.

Finally, women don’t want to debate the current biased situation because they like it fine, just the way it is! Naturally, they don’t want to hear the men’s side of it because it reveals them for what they are.

BarcoP says:

“The other interesting thing about my little control group of divorced friends, family, and coworkers is that the cheaters were very likely to remarry (sometimes with disastrous results)and the cheated on were less likely to remarry. It doesn’t seem to gender specific.”

What this says is that those cheating can do so because they have those attributes that attract the other sex. They are also able to remarry because of this. Finally, they were already in a new relationship.

There may be a some “after shock” effect that the party being cheated on has soured on marriage, as a result of their negative experience, but I think this is less than you imply.

Before I learned about divorce from colleagues at work, I used to think marriage between two income earners meant that each would be responsible for their own savings and retirement, no matter how the marriage goes. Then I learned about divorce settlements. I am not so sure that “No Fault” divorce really means a spouse can dump the other spouse and not end up losing half his life savings. California is a common property state. Try divorce in California. I’d rather be single in California than married in a no fault state – I love California more than marriage, I suppose!

For us older never-married single men who have been warned off by divorced colleagues who told us horror stories, we get insulted by women (never other men) that there must be something wrong with us in the first place

Yes, there is something wrong with us: We are too intelligent to play their game (the game of the feminists).

And it is interesting about what the younger men say about some younger women in 20s/30s. They are perhaps starting to understand the sensible men are on strike against marriage. That study by Rutgers University presents numbers that don’t lie. You can see the strike in the numbers.

I don’t think anyone mentioned it, but the anti-male bias in the courts is hurting some good women too. I have three older sisters, one never married. Two of them divorced. One married for only two years when she was 21 and now she’s in her 50s. They got nothing in their divorce. In both cases, the ex husbands were to blame. I am no troll, but sometimes I wonder if we men hear only the divorced male’s viewpoint at work because we do not associate with divorced women at work?

My own opinion is that divorces might not be all the women’s fault. And I don’t know if what percentage. But that is not really why I am on strike against marriage. I am on strike because I don’t want government involved in my love life or my sex life in any way, shape, or form.