Men and Marriage

Joseph Dunn is sin­gle and lov­ing it:

[Guy­land is] also known as bach­e­lor­hood and, accord­ing to Dee­son [the book’s author], the age at which he should make his way to the depar­ture gate is 35. This is when a man should start think­ing about find­ing a good woman and set­tling down. Shortly after­wards, he should also con­sider trad­ing in the sports car for a Volvo, donate the Xbox to a children’s char­ity and decom­mis­sion the DVD col­lec­tion. The reward for doing so is a life of sim­ple bliss, where he lives longer and hap­pier, snug­gled up in the warm embrace of a lov­ing relationship.

Well, not so fast, Dee­son. Not every­one feels this way…

Read­ers agree. “Stay sin­gle and see her at the week­ends. Man is not meant to be caged,” wrote Lucas from Lon­don. “It’s a great lifestyle choice,” wrote Rob D, also from Lon­don. “As for mar­ried men liv­ing longer, well, the indoor cat lives longer too. But it’s a fur ball with a bro­ken spirit look­ing out on a world that it will never enjoy…”

I’ve lost count of the num­ber of times a friend’s girl­friend has taken me aside and asked me when I am going to “come in from the cold”. Usu­ally I yawn and say, “When I meet the right per­son”, but even I don’t believe it any more. Truth is, I prob­a­bly have met the right per­son, prob­a­bly more than one. But I’ve been in a cou­ple of long-termers and I’ve seen what mar­riage can do to my friends, and I’ve decided I am happy in Guy­land and I want to hang out here longer.

Over the past five years, how­ever, a third type [of bach­e­lor other than male spin­sters and those headed to an early grave as a result of par­ty­ing too much] has emerged. Dubbed “city adven­tur­ers” (which, I grant you, sounds a bit naff — Bear Grylls in pin­stripes?), these are sin­gle men aged 25–39 with an aver­age wage of more than £40,000. They spend their spare time eat­ing out, going to the pub and the cin­ema and tak­ing week­end breaks. They will prob­a­bly ski or snow­board and, when asked, they will say they are knowl­edge­able about wine (though they prob­a­bly aren’t)…

Too many fee­ble men give in to the sup­posed secu­rity of mar­riage. They see it as panacea to their prob­lems (includ­ing, but by no means lim­ited to, alien­ation, inde­ci­sion, and lack of direc­tion and moti­va­tion). “I don’t want to be the old­est father at the school gates,” lamented one friend recently, explain­ing why he was get­ting engaged to his girl­friend, who we all know will make his life a misery.

Mar­riage like this is for wimps. “I gen­uinely pity most of my mar­ried friends, who feel trapped, bored and frus­trated,” wrote Mike from Hong Kong. “The only men I know who are hap­pily mar­ried are the laid-back guys who need a woman for direc­tion. Mar­riage is not a smart idea for the alpha male…”

Being sin­gle, sol­vent and in charge of your own life is fun. And then there’s the sex. “When I first found myself a bach­e­lor at 33, I hadn’t realised how much women in their mid-twenties enjoyed the com­pany of a man of that age,” said James, 35. “More cash, more charm and more of the ben­e­fit of the trial and error of what women like…”

Inci­den­tally, dat­ing younger girls draws a curi­ously bit­ter response from sin­gle women my own age. I remind them that there is nice sym­me­try in this: every school­boy remem­bers the moment at 15 when all the best-looking girls in his year decided they didn’t fancy their spotty-faced con­tem­po­raries and began dat­ing the sixth-former with a Vaux­hall Astra. It’s not revenge, exactly, but they started it.

I hate to sound like a bro­ken record blog­ger by writ­ing on this so often, but I see so many opin­ion columns on the dat­ing world that I must infer that a par­a­digm shift is occur­ing in the West­ern world. (Curi­ously, most of these essays are in British news­pa­pers. Is there an epi­demic of lonely, sin­gle women and sta­t­is­fied, unat­tached men there?)

Read­ers can read all of my prior posts, includ­ing a lengthy essay, in the Dat­ing cat­e­gory. But I’ll para­phrase my view one more time.

Women gen­er­ally desire mar­riage out of a bio­log­i­cal and soci­o­log­i­cal imper­a­tive to have chil­dren and raise them in a sta­ble fam­ily that is eco­nom­i­cally sta­ble. Unless men want to have chil­dren, they do not need mar­riage to obtain sex, enjoy the com­pany of close friends, have fun, and live a finan­cially secure life. The older and more suc­cess­ful men become, the more they see that they are more attrac­tive to young women who had rejected them when they were that age. Men know that most mar­riages end in divorce or lose their lus­ter, and they do not want to lose half of their assets (and their chil­dren) or remain stuck in an unhappy marriage.

Now, do not mis­un­der­stand me. I am not knock­ing the insti­tu­tion of mar­riage; I do want to get mar­ried some­day. Mar­riage, and even an infor­mal, lov­ing rela­tion­ship between two people, is spe­cial and sacred, espe­cially in Jew­ish mys­ti­cal thought. How­ever, I am high­light­ing the prac­ti­cal issues that are aris­ing in the mod­ern dat­ing scene as a result of the con­flict between our bio­log­i­cal pro­gram­ming, fem­i­nist ideas, and the mod­ern world itself.

In short, men are increas­ingly feel­ing that mar­riage is not worth it. It is up to women to con­vince them oth­er­wise. Sin­gle women: Do not be crazy. Do not look for money. Do not nag. Do not pester. Learn how to cook a nice meal. Do not insult your man behind his back. Do not insult your man’s friends. Do not be overly picky. Do not look only for super­fi­cial char­ac­ter­is­tics (“I only go out with guys who have sexy eyes”). Sign a prenup if the man desires one. Let the man have fun with his friends often. Do not stop hav­ing sex when­ever you do not get your way. Do not stop hav­ing sex because you are tired. Keep in shape (and get him to do this as well). Be lov­ing. Be happy.

Sin­gle women: If you do these things, you will find a good man quickly. Remem­ber: the choice is his.