http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/rudov/2005/rudov102605.htm
October 26, 2005
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by Marc H. Rudov
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Introduction
Recently, I was dining at the bar of one of my favorite haunts, seated next to a very attractive woman in her mid-40s. After exchanging a few pleasantries, we eventually chatted about the dating scene. I complimented her unusually young appearance, and she admitted to having had some “work done” after her divorce. Not content just with my approval of her stunning looks, she felt compelled also to gloat that her ex-husband’s spousal support had funded her plastic surgery.
When my facial expression quickly turned to glowering disdain and my jaw dropped far enough to allow my digested food, if necessary, to reverse its course, she then bragged that all her girlfriends were likewise using their ex-husbands’ support payments to underwrite their nips & tucks. I wasn’t sure which angered me more: hearing yet another woman describe how she legally fleeced a man or hearing how much she relished doing so.
Upon absorbing my cynical reaction to her idiocy, this entitled divorcee realized that her parasitic/predatory connection to men may be problematic in her quest to find true love—if, in fact, that is what she wants. As I bid her good riddance and exited the restaurant, she apologized profusely for ruining my meal. This vamp, who unfortunately represents too many women in our midst, perceives not that she and those of her ilk are killing marriage—by driving men away from it. In fact, I argue that the future of marriage lies in their hands.
Trust but Verify
As I ruminated this bizarre but predictable tête-à-tête, I felt anguish about the acrimony in our society, to which our children are innocently exposed and doomed to perpetuate. To test my hypothesis that the American institution of marriage is in a shabby state of decline, I decided to poll my readers. So, via NoNonsenseDating.com, I asked never-married and divorced men and women this question: Given the 50% divorce rate AND the high emotional and financial costs of divorce, will you get married if you meet your soulmate? Below are the results of this marriage poll, in which 329 men and women voted.
The main message from the diagram above is that, in general, women favor marriage much more than men do. This matches my anecdotal evidence. It’s not that men are against marriage, per se; it’s that men are against the cauldron of marriage in our American gynocracy. Marriage for men in this country has become a sucker’s deal—financially, legally, and emotionally. Given the 50% rate of divorce and its concomitant ebb of wealth, the prospect of marriage to a man is akin to investing 50% of his wealth in a new stock that has a guaranteed 50% probability of tanking—not to mention the deleterious effects on the relationship he has with his children.
Never-married men voted in favor of getting married by a ratio of only 1.2:1. Compare that with how the never-married women voted: 3.2:1! I’m sure that 20 years ago, most never-married men were wildly in favor of marriage. But, times have changed, and the peer and parental pressures to marry have all but disappeared. So, if never-married men were restricted to marrying never-married women, given the aforementioned ratios, there would be many women mathematically unable to find willing marriage partners.
Now look at the voting of the divorced men and women. This preference gap is much more severe. These people are experienced in marriage and divorce—unlike the never-married folks who have only witnessed their parents and friends enduring the slog and financial ruin of marital dissolution. Divorced women, by a ratio of 3.1:1 (almost equal to the marital fervor of their never-married sisters), want to remarry. But, the divorced men, by a ratio of 2.1:1, do not want to remarry. Why the disparity? The answer is pretty straightforward: women gain from divorce; men lose from divorce.
Human behavior is immutable. People vote with their pocketbooks. GM proved that in the summer of 2005, by extending its employee discount on cars and trucks to the general public. GM’s revenues, moving nowhere before the program, increased 41 percent in the program’s first month—people couldn’t buy fast enough. Once the steep discounts took GM into the red, though, GM again voted with its pocketbook to end the program. With the unbelievable pain and suffering of divorce, how else could one explain the eagerness of women to repeat it and the resolve of men to shun it? It’s not rocket science. It’s money.
The New Landscape
We live in an age where people are connected electronically—e-mails, instant messages, text messages, and ubiquitous cellphones—but disconnected emotionally. It’s common today for men and women break up via e-mail! It’s also common today for men and women to have noncommittal, loveless sex over extended periods. The number of women who’ve told me they are having regular sex with men they never would accept as boyfriends—just until they find Mr. Right—amazes me. People on both sides of this coin are totally desensitized and emotionally disconnected. How can they have meaningful relationships?
Conclusion
In my book and other articles, I’ve written copiously about the imbalance between men and women—favoring women. This imbalance is wrong and destructive and is destroying the incentive for men to get married. If women continue to drive men away from marriage, by leveraging this imbalance, the institution will die. It follows, therefore, that women control the fate of marriage.
Women complain incessantly that they cannot find husband candidates, yet they continue to bash and exploit and destroy men. Accordingly, men now do not trust women and also are in physical jeopardy because VAWA has skewered their civil rights. Ladies, it’s time to wake up, to recognize this reality. It’s time to make wholesale changes to your relationships with men and time to stop using them. It’s time to stop reelecting legislators who abridge men’s civil rights (like the ones who reauthorized VAWA). It’s time to treat men well and to view them as indispensable to the integral family. It’s time to shun the radical feminists. It’s time to sign prenuptial agreements, without accusing men of lacking romance. It’s time to act.
If marriage continues along its path of agonizing death, the out-of-wedlock birthrate—already 30% for whites and 70% for blacks—will skyrocket to unimaginable heights. What kind of society will we have, then? How many more screwed up kids do you want to hear screaming in the supermarket aisles? How many more 15-year-old pregnant girls do you want to see in abortion clinics—or in schools? How many more teenage boys do you want to see lost without their fathers, in gangs and on drugs?
America is an anti-male country—as evidenced in our media, our courts, our legislatures, and our law-enforcement systems—forcing men to flee the marital scene. It didn’t become that way by accident. Women helped make it happen. So, women have the power to change it, to balance it, to make it fair. If women fail to halt the impending death of marriage, it will die. Let’s see if their plaintive cry for more husband candidates is just empty complaining.
Marc H. Rudov
Copyright © 2005 by Marc H. Rudov. All rights reserved.
October 26, 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
by Marc H. Rudov
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Introduction
Recently, I was dining at the bar of one of my favorite haunts, seated next to a very attractive woman in her mid-40s. After exchanging a few pleasantries, we eventually chatted about the dating scene. I complimented her unusually young appearance, and she admitted to having had some “work done” after her divorce. Not content just with my approval of her stunning looks, she felt compelled also to gloat that her ex-husband’s spousal support had funded her plastic surgery.
When my facial expression quickly turned to glowering disdain and my jaw dropped far enough to allow my digested food, if necessary, to reverse its course, she then bragged that all her girlfriends were likewise using their ex-husbands’ support payments to underwrite their nips & tucks. I wasn’t sure which angered me more: hearing yet another woman describe how she legally fleeced a man or hearing how much she relished doing so.
Upon absorbing my cynical reaction to her idiocy, this entitled divorcee realized that her parasitic/predatory connection to men may be problematic in her quest to find true love—if, in fact, that is what she wants. As I bid her good riddance and exited the restaurant, she apologized profusely for ruining my meal. This vamp, who unfortunately represents too many women in our midst, perceives not that she and those of her ilk are killing marriage—by driving men away from it. In fact, I argue that the future of marriage lies in their hands.
Trust but Verify
As I ruminated this bizarre but predictable tête-à-tête, I felt anguish about the acrimony in our society, to which our children are innocently exposed and doomed to perpetuate. To test my hypothesis that the American institution of marriage is in a shabby state of decline, I decided to poll my readers. So, via NoNonsenseDating.com, I asked never-married and divorced men and women this question: Given the 50% divorce rate AND the high emotional and financial costs of divorce, will you get married if you meet your soulmate? Below are the results of this marriage poll, in which 329 men and women voted.
The main message from the diagram above is that, in general, women favor marriage much more than men do. This matches my anecdotal evidence. It’s not that men are against marriage, per se; it’s that men are against the cauldron of marriage in our American gynocracy. Marriage for men in this country has become a sucker’s deal—financially, legally, and emotionally. Given the 50% rate of divorce and its concomitant ebb of wealth, the prospect of marriage to a man is akin to investing 50% of his wealth in a new stock that has a guaranteed 50% probability of tanking—not to mention the deleterious effects on the relationship he has with his children.
Never-married men voted in favor of getting married by a ratio of only 1.2:1. Compare that with how the never-married women voted: 3.2:1! I’m sure that 20 years ago, most never-married men were wildly in favor of marriage. But, times have changed, and the peer and parental pressures to marry have all but disappeared. So, if never-married men were restricted to marrying never-married women, given the aforementioned ratios, there would be many women mathematically unable to find willing marriage partners.
Now look at the voting of the divorced men and women. This preference gap is much more severe. These people are experienced in marriage and divorce—unlike the never-married folks who have only witnessed their parents and friends enduring the slog and financial ruin of marital dissolution. Divorced women, by a ratio of 3.1:1 (almost equal to the marital fervor of their never-married sisters), want to remarry. But, the divorced men, by a ratio of 2.1:1, do not want to remarry. Why the disparity? The answer is pretty straightforward: women gain from divorce; men lose from divorce.
Human behavior is immutable. People vote with their pocketbooks. GM proved that in the summer of 2005, by extending its employee discount on cars and trucks to the general public. GM’s revenues, moving nowhere before the program, increased 41 percent in the program’s first month—people couldn’t buy fast enough. Once the steep discounts took GM into the red, though, GM again voted with its pocketbook to end the program. With the unbelievable pain and suffering of divorce, how else could one explain the eagerness of women to repeat it and the resolve of men to shun it? It’s not rocket science. It’s money.
The New Landscape
We live in an age where people are connected electronically—e-mails, instant messages, text messages, and ubiquitous cellphones—but disconnected emotionally. It’s common today for men and women break up via e-mail! It’s also common today for men and women to have noncommittal, loveless sex over extended periods. The number of women who’ve told me they are having regular sex with men they never would accept as boyfriends—just until they find Mr. Right—amazes me. People on both sides of this coin are totally desensitized and emotionally disconnected. How can they have meaningful relationships?
Conclusion
In my book and other articles, I’ve written copiously about the imbalance between men and women—favoring women. This imbalance is wrong and destructive and is destroying the incentive for men to get married. If women continue to drive men away from marriage, by leveraging this imbalance, the institution will die. It follows, therefore, that women control the fate of marriage.
Women complain incessantly that they cannot find husband candidates, yet they continue to bash and exploit and destroy men. Accordingly, men now do not trust women and also are in physical jeopardy because VAWA has skewered their civil rights. Ladies, it’s time to wake up, to recognize this reality. It’s time to make wholesale changes to your relationships with men and time to stop using them. It’s time to stop reelecting legislators who abridge men’s civil rights (like the ones who reauthorized VAWA). It’s time to treat men well and to view them as indispensable to the integral family. It’s time to shun the radical feminists. It’s time to sign prenuptial agreements, without accusing men of lacking romance. It’s time to act.
If marriage continues along its path of agonizing death, the out-of-wedlock birthrate—already 30% for whites and 70% for blacks—will skyrocket to unimaginable heights. What kind of society will we have, then? How many more screwed up kids do you want to hear screaming in the supermarket aisles? How many more 15-year-old pregnant girls do you want to see in abortion clinics—or in schools? How many more teenage boys do you want to see lost without their fathers, in gangs and on drugs?
America is an anti-male country—as evidenced in our media, our courts, our legislatures, and our law-enforcement systems—forcing men to flee the marital scene. It didn’t become that way by accident. Women helped make it happen. So, women have the power to change it, to balance it, to make it fair. If women fail to halt the impending death of marriage, it will die. Let’s see if their plaintive cry for more husband candidates is just empty complaining.
Marc H. Rudov
Copyright © 2005 by Marc H. Rudov. All rights reserved.
