Life is too short: role of marriage, sex, cheating, etc...

[Rollo Tomassi]

The Marriage Industry

Global marriage rates
Global divorce rates
Protocol for divorce in other countries
Median ages of marriage and divorce by sex
Interesting stats

Sorry to be the statistician here, but I'm particular to citing sources. All of these are pretty quick hits so have a look.

The U.S. leads the world in marriage and divorce rates by a substantial margin, and in my opinion this is because we treat romanticism as an industry. For the past 50 years western culture has systematically removed gender definitions so effectively that we now, collectively, rely on our media for examples and models of not just appropriate behavior, but appropriate thinking. Our gender roles, and all of the requisite expectaion of them - not to mention reciprocated, mutual repect from the opposite gender - are no longer (or are increasingly rarely) taught by the previous generation, but rather a concerted, life-long, industrialization of romanticism feeds our gender identities. This in turn perpetuates a cycle that is then reapplied for the next generation, not only from the 'Marriage Industry', but again from the parents of the next cycle who themselves have ego-invested their gender understandings in this commercialization.

From birth to early adulthood, were fed idealization of romantic love (and marriage) as being a 'goal state'. All personal happiness can be realized in this idealization and the Industry starts spinning its engines in a mind boggling array of media. Contrary to 'convenient' popular perception, gone are the days of Snow White and Cinderella - those archetypes are far too feminine-needy. No, today your 5 year old sons and daughters get the "strong females" in Beauty & the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Alladin and Mulan. Disney makes for easy illustrations, but have a look at Nickelodeon cartoons on a given day. In all of these examples the masculine elements are the favorable traits to be attained by the female character while they are ridiculed in the male characters. Mulan goes so far as to make the girl a boy, while establishing the male characters as caricatures. However, in the end of all these fairey tales we see the final culmination of the plot in a marriage of the love interests, with the prerequisite that the male be wealthy, a prince, 'truly' in love with the female, and they live happily ever after.

Next we procede into puberty and a constant bombardment of eroticized (not sexualized) idealization couched in romantic love as being the mythic 'goal state'. We all want to fvck *insert beautiful celebrity's name here*, but we'd marry her to be legit, not appear "shallow" and ensure that unlimited access to unlimited sexuality indefinitely. And this message is repeated everywhere in popular culture - in music, in movies, on television, in magazines, in liturature, it is relentless in our collective consciousness. By the time our college years arrive our indoctrination is complete. We've been taught to simultaneously want idealized romantic love, but also to go nuts in Cancun on spring break. For a few this means an early marriage, for others it means indulging in our 'party years', but the idealization remains in both situations.

We then get married for love or security and the expectations and entitlements begin to conflict with the every day reality of sustaining marriage. But never fear, the industry is here for us again. "50 ways to rock his world in bed!", "Hot tips on keeping your married sex fresh" are the buy-lines on the magazines, "Dr." Phil pops off on Oprah about what your "new" expectations in marriage ought to be and the self-help aisle in Barnes & Noble is packed to the rafters with how to get your wife/husabnd to be a better partner.

Getting a divorce? Got cheated on? Been the cheater? The Industry's got that covered too. Family/Marriage/Presonal counseling, divorce lawyers, custody attorneys, hell, we've even got real estate agents specializing in divorcee clients. Aww, too bad, you couldn't make your marriage work? Want to try again? Obviously your last partner(s) wasn't your 'Soulmate', sign up for eHarmony today and we'll match you up with someone we guarantee is "compatible."

Essentially EGOIST's Mom is relating her honest assessment of her own experience - unfortunately this assessement has been colored over a lifetime by a machine, by the Matrix, that sold her an idealization that she became disillusioned with.

My 10th wedding anniversary will be in July this year and I'm in the process of writing an epic post for this very forum about how to have, and what constitutes a successful marriage. So I'm a bit loathe to prop up too much on this thread, but I'll sum up a few points. I have had many, very real opportunities to fvck women other than my wife in that 10 year stretch. In each instance I turned them down. It's not that I didn't consider infidelity, it's not that I couldn't have very easily gotten away with it. I'm man enough to admit that, as hot as my wife still is, the proposition of sex with a hot young woman is a temptation. Any guy saying different is selling you something or never had a realistic opportunity.

I could sit here typing away and pontificate on all of the moralistic reasons why a man (or woman) should never cheat. I can give you a hundred reasons why I chose to be faithful to my wife, all of which would smack of this very AFC idealism that I just railed against above and I could, genuinely, declare that I love my wife so intensely that I will "forsake all others." But what it really comes down to is two things.

First, froma a moral perspective, if I cheat on my wife, I don't just cheat on her. I cheat on my daughter, I cheat on our families, I cheat on my friends, I cheat on the support and sacrifices she's made in order for me to attain my education, career and, yes, status. I cheat on all of the brothers I have on this very forum by disrespecting your respect of what I post.

Secondly, my wife and I genuinely have a prolonged desire for each other. It's not always 100% hot monkey sex, in fact at times I'm sure it's a chore for her, but it's (more than) occasionally very passionate and I have no doubt of her desire.

Have a read of my post The Desire Dynamic here. This pretty much explains my take on Desire as essential in any LTR.

 

[WestCoaster]

Excellent post Rollo, as always. Very astute and interesting. I have nothing to add here as you hit it on all topics, and went back to my favorite: how U.S. culture has twisted, brainwashed, and corrupted the American public. Disney is good at that.

* One question and perhaps I'm reading the graph wrong: It says the U.S. has 4.95 divorces for every 1,000 people. That's far from the 50 percent we're told to believe. Would'nt 50 percent be 1 divorce for every 2 people, or 500 for every 1,000? I'm no statistician, need some help here ...

** Re-read another one of the charts and that did indicate a close to 50 percent failure rate on marriage. Still perplexed ...

 

[DJDamage]

It says the U.S. has 4.95 divorces for every 1,000 people. That's far from the 50 percent we're told to believe.

It is 50%.

Its 4.95 divorces per 1000 people (the 1000 people its just a random portion of the population at any age and has nothing to do with them being married or single).

 

[Rollo Tomassi]

I think I need to address something here I missed in my last post. I got a PM from FRIVILOUS telling me how impressed he was with the last two paragraphs of my post and I want to clear this up for everyone. I think I need to emphasize that my understanding and practice of fidelity isn't based on some esoteric sense of morality so much as it is simple pragmatism. That might sound cold and calculating, but it's really more of a statement of purpose.

It's not selfish to seek out sexual experience when a person is deprived of it - we all find ways to meet this requirement. The pornography and romance novel industry are multi-billion dollar enterprises because they fill a very real need. Married men fill strip clubs and married women religiously read romance novels, love 'chick-flicks' and obsessively watch reruns of Sex & the City or Desperate Housewives. They're not 'baaaaadd' people for doing so, they are simply coping with a need that isn't being accounted for in their LTR. Again the Marriage Industry accomodates the very deficit it helps to create - it's social marketeering perfected.

Infidelity is subjective for the couple defining it. Don't take this the wrong way. I'm in no way excusing the breaking of a promise - in fact that's my definition of 'cheating', not doing something you've promised to whether it's marriage, family or business. For some women, a man 'enjoying' porn is cheating, a man going to the strip club (however often) is cheating, a man even looking for a fraction of a second longer than she thinks he should at any woman may constitute cheating to her. As I stated in my previous post, self-help books fill the "psychology" section shelves at Barnes & Noble with ways to make him conform to her preconditioned, idealization of how he 'ought' to be. These preconceptions are the result of this Marriage Industry that mold the criteria for what should or shouldn't be cheating.

I don't cheat on my wife because I married a woman that understands Men need to be Men and she wouldn't have me any other way. It took (and takes) a lot of understanding of this yourself and devloping realistic expectations from yourself and your spouse. I've personally slept with over 40 women in my lifetime, and though I've regreted the fallout of some of those encounters, I've never regreted the sex. I KNEW damn well I could never be faithful in marriage to a woman who didn't meet my standards in this regard so I thought I'd always be single. I was fortunate in that I knew I couldn't settle for less and expect a healthy marriage, so i had resigned myself to beign a bachelor. I wont say I got lucky when I met Mrs. Tomassi, but I was fortunate enough to be able to see what I wanted when it was presented to me.

The obvious danger in all of this is expressed in the attitudes of guys like FRIVOLOUS. Guys (usually AFCs) who are gung ho about holding themselves up to these unreasonable standards set for them since puberty are exactly the guys who WILL cheat in an LTR once they realize that they settled for a 'bait & switch' marriage.

There's a real, self-righteous zeal I think most guys would like to entertain in making these bold declarations of purpose when it comes to how loyal they'd be if they could get that girl, but this is really just a form of psychological peacocking - a not-so-clever way of OVERTLY attempting to separate himself from "other guys." This is why I get disgusted with the men in Promise Keepers and their bumperstickers decrying "I Love My Wife." You're supposed to you dumb sunavab!tch! It's a form of seeking recognition for uniqueness in something that ought to be the standard and thinking it makes you more attractive as a prospective mate.

So, try not to imbue my stance on infidelity as some profound declaration of moral perfection. I'm not anyone's role model - I wanna fvck just like you guys do and as often as I can. The only difference is I want to bang my wife more, because I had the experience to figure out what I wanted and knew anything less would lead to my ruin. I can't think of one guy I know or have ever counseled who can say that at 38 he wants to hit it with his 41 year old wife more often than when he was 28.

 

[Colossus]

I KNEW damn well I could never be faithful in marriage to a woman who didn't meet my standards in this regard so I thought I'd always be single...

You mean in a sexual regard? (I.e-frequency, desire, attitudes, etc...)

 

[Rollo Tomassi]

In this instance yes.

 

[Good_ol_boy]

I think I need to address something here I missed in my last post. I got a PM from FRIVILOUS telling me how impressed he was with the last two paragraphs of my post and I want to clear this up for everyone. ....

One of the few posts lately that was actually worth reading!

 

[DonWhoan]

My first post and let me chime in. I'm a 47 YO male married for 6+ years and 3 kids. I've been unhappily married for the last 6 years, a loveless marriage. For the last year, I have been having an affair with a twice cancer survivor (breast and Leukemia) she's the most awesome person I've ever met and the sex is the best I've ever experienced (even with one boob).

I've fallen in love with this woman, the connection between us is unbelievable, we are very passionate and loving to each other. I know that what I'm doing is wrong since I have kids, but I'm just not happy in my marriage, have been thru MC and therapy. The problem I have is that, this woman as good as it sounds is 42 YO and divorced with no kids. One night she picked up a guy and kissed him in front of me to make me jealous so I would move out of my house. She told me that she was trying to make me jealous and blamed the alcohol. I say BS to this and broke it off. The problem is that I've never connected with anyone like her and I'm having a hell of time letting go. She's pissed off at me cause I still do family stuff with the wife and kids, eventhough I'm not sleeping with my wife. I'm planning on moving out when I have enough money to rent an Apartment.

The moral of the story is, I would never have another affair or cheat on anyone again. Things would have been different if I met this woman when I was single. As far as to what's going to happen to my relationship with this woman, I don't know. I feel like a drug addict hooked on a woman instead of booze or drugs. I know the best thing to do is to drop her and move on, but you guys don't know how hard this can be.

Wish me luck.

 

[Egoist]

My first post and let me chime in. I'm a 47 YO male married for 6+ years and 3 kids. I've been unhappily married for the last 6 years, a loveless marriage. For the last year, I have been having an affair with a twice cancer survivor (breast and Leukemia) she's the most awesome person I've ever met and the sex is the best I've ever experienced (even with one boob).

I've fallen in love with this woman, the connection between us is unbelievable, we are very passionate and loving to each other. I know that what I'm doing is wrong since I have kids, but I'm just not happy in my marriage, have been thru MC and therapy. The problem I have is that, this woman as good as it sounds is 42 YO and divorced with no kids. One night she picked up a guy and kissed him in front of me to make me jealous so I would move out of my house. She told me that she was trying to make me jealous and blamed the alcohol. I say BS to this and broke it off. The problem is that I've never connected with anyone like her and I'm having a hell of time letting go. She's pissed off at me cause I still do family stuff with the wife and kids, eventhough I'm not sleeping with my wife. I'm planning on moving out when I have enough money to rent an Apartment.

The moral of the story is, I would never have another affair or cheat on anyone again. Things would have been different if I met this woman when I was single. As far as to what's going to happen to my relationship with this woman, I don't know. I feel like a drug addict hooked on a woman instead of booze or drugs. I know the best thing to do is to drop her and move on, but you guys don't know how hard this can be.

Wish me luck.

wow, hearing it first hand makes makes it even more powerful.

it sucks doesn't it? What's right and wrong here? This is EXACTLY the type of the situation I wanted to discuss in this thread. Are you right in doing what you did? Are you wrong in having married the wrong woman? Could you have predicted how this would have ended up? Should you have just pursued your passion regardless of your family?

I don't know.

Maybe a way to think about it is this. If you have a week or a month or a year left to leave, how would you do it? Would you pursue your love? Stay with family? Follow your heart.

Oh, and good luck.

 

[DonWhoan]

wow, hearing it first hand makes makes it even more powerful.

it sucks doesn't it? What's right and wrong here? This is EXACTLY the type of the situation I wanted to discuss in this thread. Are you right in doing what you did? Are you wrong in having married the wrong woman? Could you have predicted how this would have ended up? Should you have just pursued your passion regardless of your family?

I don't know.

Maybe a way to think about it is this. If you have a week or a month or a year left to leave, how would you do it? Would you pursue your love? Stay with family? Follow your heart.

Oh, and good luck.

I think I married the wrong woman. I got married at 40 and when you get to that age people wonder if you are gay. I F***ed up and married due to peer pressure and settled. The selfish side of me says pursue the passion cause I've never felt the feelings that I have for this woman (she's pretty hot and would never guess that she was in her deathbed at one time). Right now I'm taking it one day at a time. Part of me has trust issues with her and that worries me.

 

[Bourne]

Nice thread and good post RT. I'm looking forward to your Epic post.

 

[Vulpine]

Back to back bleak portrayals of our modern western society by RT. Ouch.

All these random thoughts have blazed through my head, but the verbage is never as good RT's posts. My thoughts and RT's posts vary in that my thoughts are bitter and dreadful, albeit realistic, outlooks on my future. And yet, RT seems to cast a beautiful optimism on the gloom by providing a "If I can do it, you can too" frame. It's like being depressed with a smile on your face.

RT: You are my soul mate, the yin to my yang... will you marry me too? We can move to Utah and be mormans if that's what it takes.

J/K

Very well said Rollo Tomassi.

"We're a generation of men RAISED by women" - Tyler Durden, "Fight Club"

This place is like Fight Club without the fighting. I mean, the mentality is here, and the contempt for our modern culture is here. All we need now is soap. I mean, with enough soap, one can blow up just about anything... if one were so inclined. I vote the Cosmopolitain building, the Vogue building, Oprah's building, and let's not forget about the Oxygen Network and Lifetime as a start.

 

[Egoist]

The whole problem with the way the 'world' views cheating is with the need to place blame on someone. The question on who is wrong and who is right can only be answered by the individual that is asking the question. Cheaters can say that they aren't wrong. But it means little really because others would just believe that this cheater is screwed in the head and wrong anyway.

Cheating is neither wrong nor right.
To a spouse that loves his/her partner incredibly (could be called oneitis), cheating is probably wrong.
To a spouse that is incredibly unhappy in his/her marriage, cheating is probably not completely wrong.
To some spouses, cheating is okay because they are all too prepared to lose the marriage.
To some spouses, cheating is wrong because there are children to consider.

So, who is to say that cheating is wrong or right? If you say it is wrong, so it is, but only for you and whoever else that would agree with you.

Personally, I would rather leave the question of wrong and right up to the person involved to determine. If I have a spouse and she cheats on me, she has to decide whether she thinks she was wrong or right. If she believes she's right, then she is right. I'm not about to dictate to her what she has to believe is wrong or right. Same goes with me. When I do something, I decide for myself whether it is something that I believe is right or wrong. Other people can go fvck themselves if they think they know what is right and wrong for a grown adult to do. Since I dictate what is right and wrong for me, I will allow others to do the same.

yeah well said.

 

[Rollo Tomassi]

RT: You are my soul mate, the yin to my yang... will you marry me too? We can move to Utah and be mormans if that's what it takes.

Slow down there sailor, I don't ship out on that boat. :nervous:

 

[Vulpine]

Slow down there sailor, I don't ship out on that boat. :nervous:

Neither do I, but, I can't deny my feelings for you any longer... But, you're the ONE! How will I ever get along without you? Without you I am nothing! Oh, please be with me forever, I'll do anything! :moon:

Yikes... - Whoa - I think I went to far with that smiley, I feel like spitting up.

Edit: I'm sorry, this looks to be off topic, but is meant as funny satire: a little "sheik homosexuality acceptance" and "Oneitis/epic fairy tale" love mixed with some "it's not cheating on your wife if we're married". I definately went overboard with the moon smiley.

 

[Egoist]

thanks for screwing up my thread you buttpirates!

 

[ElChoclo]

Just as a cigarette smoker doesn't worry about cancer until he gets it, so the never married guy takes an optomistic view of marriage. So too does the married guy who has never divorced. But show me the divorced guy who wholeheartedly endorses the institution.

Where is Dietzcoi when he is sorely needed?

 

[dietzcoi]

Elcholo

I am still here (occasionally) and still against marriage, or at least AFC marriage!!

(Is there any other kind?)

Dietzcoi

 

[DJDamage]

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/150220/bride_cheats_with_the_best_man/

 

[A-Unit]

Re:

In the infamous and immortal words of Vince Vaughn...

"What's wrong here is the institution of marriage! It's irrational."

Go out there and get some STRANGE ASS!

--------------------

I think there's a cost to benefit ratio, for men, of when a relationship becomes more costly than profitable, at least in my terms there is. I hear from women "how guys want to have babies, too," but I can't empathize with that. Sure, it'd be sweet to play with our sons (if we have one or more), and raise them, but there's a complementary cost or invested effort in doing so. You find the complementary woman, you have said kids, and want all the ups and downs that come along with it. Your DESIRE to have kids does not look beyond the woman you have them with or the life you seek to live.

The times I've heard such gibberish were women bantering to guilt men into relationships, that and they ACTUALLY buy what guy-friends say or what drunk guys say, or what guys say that are trying to get laid. In an ideal world, men would have casual sex for most of their lives, no strings attached, maybe raise kids, but still remain somewhat free.

I'm doing the relationship thing now and I've done the hookup thing before. But if one can't get a relationship to function, whatever is wrong now will be magnified later, and I don't have to be married to know this. The woman's self-entitlement and expectations of care, of a marriage, and a life will be amplified. That's why I don't get guys who think the future will be better than the past. We're humans. It's ok to be imperfect. "I'm not perfect, and who are we kidding, we both know you're not."

My boss/partner has asked, "Why is divorce so expensive?". Because it's worth it.

There isn't a question people don't really want to lie down and die alone, even though they do in a realistic sense anyways. And the love and support of a good woman goes miles beyond what a bunch of no-name hookups provide with their casual flings. Both situations can be fun. The coming and goings of open relationships, and the comfort and closeness of being with someone who genuinely cares, but the self help industry has to discard the idealistic expectations they are trying to push on women for their men. It's ruining relationships.

A-Unit