On Marriage and Divorce and Trolls and Haters

I moderate my comments because I once got 67 comments about carpet cleaning on one post. I rarely get comments at all, so I hate to block any I do get, but an anonymous writer sent in a comment on my recent post on Krakauer's latest book. The comment had little to do with the post; it's largely just misdirected vitriol, so I thought I'd share it here for some closer scrutiny. (Sorry about the swears.)

We men must boycott marriage, and never marry. Why? Because there are ZERO benefits for men in marriage. If you get married, there is at least a 50 percent chance that your wife will divorce you, kidnap your children from you, and steal all your money in divorce. 

So, what are the alternatives to marriage?
1. Learn how to game and seduce women
2. Fuck prostitutes
3. Masturbate to porn
etc 

Did you know that it's cheaper to fuck a prostitute once a week than to maintain a wife? You will get bored of fucking your wife after the first six months of marriage but with a prostitute you can fuck a new one every time. 

There is already a MASSIVE anti-marriage campaign worldwide, with men basically giving up on marriage and refusing to get married. Here are two recent articles on it:

ABOUT THOSE ARTICLES:

This main article is from Peter Lloyd of the Daily Mail (the second article is merely reporting on the first link). Lloyd writes about a new book that suggests the falling marriage rate is all women's fault:

"Ultimately, men know there’s a good chance they’ll lose their friends, their respect, their space, their sex life, their money and — if it all goes wrong — their family,’ says Dr Helen Smith, author of Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood And The American Dream." 

Lloyd discusses primarily the legal ramifications of marriage that skew everything in favour of the mom now in Britain (and elsewhere): "The Children Act of 1989 specifically declares: ‘The rule of law that a father is the natural guardian of his legitimate child is abolished.’"

And this is a real concern. It's not uncommon for challenged power structures to flip, Animal Farm style, instead of dissolving into a beautiful puddle of equity. Until recently, women were in a position to lose everything without a husband to grant them legitimate children and a home and a name, but once women found the numbers and strategies necessary to fight back, the dynamics flipped, and now child support and custody absolutely favour women.

I know this first hand. When I was splitting from my kid's dad, I sat down to look at how much I'd need to maintain my daughter's life at the same standard of living. This is what child support is supposed to be about - making sure children don't suffer during a break-up. But then I checked the Ontario child support tables, and found that I "had a right to" THREE TIMES that amount, which amounted to almost 45% of his take home pay. So I showed him the tables, asked for a third of the suggested amount, and we did it all without lawyers or courthouses. I'm all for primary caregivers getting support, but I question an amount that leaves the secondary caregiver struggling to get by.

And I know some women might get a little greedy when they see the dollar signs, and, possibly, when they have a lawyer that suggests they should get as much as they can to invest for the child's future. It's asking a lot of people to see what they could have and hope they choose to take less. In fact, if we could manage that at all, we wouldn't be in the dire straights we're in environmentally.

I've been through this twice. The first time round, a rookie, I immediately went to a lawyer who aggressively tried to convince me to get back-pay from the moment my oldest was born - amounting to $20,000.  I knew that a lump sum payment like that would set my ex back significantly, and I declined. But I had to be firm on that. My lawyer was ready to fight for things I didn't want. I can imagine a less anti-materialistic person having a hard time refusing to get into that battle.

I'm not sure how prevalent it is for women to go for the gold. I know it happens. But what's interesting to me is how strong that stereotype is. Even though I took only what I really needed and not a penny more in order to work towards an equitable solution for the best of the kids, both exes started down the road of common lines from these types of arguments.  It took a while to erode the stereotypes enough for them to remember what I'm actually like:

I'd stop their random drop-in visits, and get the standard accusation: "You're trying to keep the kids from me!" and I'd respond with "Not at all - let's arrange another day each week at your place." And that extra day would inevitably just fall away as they realized they didn't actually want to take them more than half the time. Restrictions can be hard to live with, so a sense of freedom can help people see what actually works best.

They'd want to buy something they couldn't afford and accuse me of being in it for the money, but a quick look at my expenses, how frugally I live, and how much I could have asked for, eventually ended those random attacks. I can't afford travelling through Europe either.

It's to a point that it can be hard to be heard above the cacophony of stereotypes around broken homes: conniving moms and deadbeat dads or disney dads. I wasn't ready for it the first time round, and it took me by surprise to be automatically slated into the bad guy role, but when I heard the same words in round two, which was a very different scenario, I knew it was a bigger cultural issue and not something I was provoking. The role models of how to make this work amiably are few and far between.


BACK TO ANON'S DIATRIBE: 

First of all, the divorce rate has actually gone down significantly. It peaked at 50% shortly after becoming easier to get, but it's not still up there. But it is true that marriage is in decline. I've never actually married myself, not for the reasons Anon suggests - all those prostitutes! - but mainly because I don't think we can actually vow to love anyone for any amount of time, much less to death. I touch a bit on other thoughts here.

But it's clear from that portion of Anon's comment that he - I'm going to go right ahead and assume it's a 'he' - really sees marriage as all about sex, even about money for sex no matter how you slice it. I find this so weird in this day and age when casual sex outside of marriage is so much more acceptable. First of all, as I explain here, there's nothing that states that sex has to be part of a marriage. It's just part of what might happen. But, that being said, some studies show that sex actually gets better after marriage. Being with one person for a while can open up new adventures that don't often happen on the first try - even with a skilled professional. But there are other things partnering up can offer: an extra set of hands to help around the house, someone to actually raise children with jointly, and maybe even at chance at some company and, if it's not asking too much, support when you need a kind word or pat on the back. Yes these things can be had outside of a marriage too, but many people find them key benefits to their marriage. Whatever works.


BUT HE HAS EVEN MORE TO SAY!

Anon goes on to explain that the problem isn't just about marriage, but about - wait for it - feminism:

Now, there are THREE main ways we can destroy feminism forever and take women off the massive pedestal they are on. We must fund and promote the following three technologies: 

1. Virtual reality sex programs,   2. Artificial wombs,   3. Sex Robots

Once these three technologies are in place, women will no longer have any power in society. After all, why would you waste time chasing after fat women in real life when you can fuck hot supermodels in virtual reality or fuck a female sex robot? And since women's main power comes from their reproduction capacity, if we REMOVE that capacity from women through the technology of artificial wombs, then women will have ZERO power left in society and thus feminism is finished forever.

THIS is the solution, gentlemen! Now we must do our part and spread the above message to as many men as possible so that we can raise the consciousness of men worldwide. I am the guy who created the famous Boycott American Women blog, which reached around 40 million people worldwide through the internet campaign I created. Therefore I know what I am talking about.

In summary:

Do not ever get married. Simply seduce and bang women, or fuck prostitutes, and help promote the above three technologies, and we will DESTROY FEMINISM FOREVER! Thank you!

If you still have doubts about WHY you should not get married, I strongly recommend you to read the following article.

Apparently, there's a belief out there that the power feminists have comes entirely from the hold we have over men as the only means to satisfy their need for sex and children. With robots to provide these services, women would lose all their hard-won gains.

It makes me wish I could write science-fiction; I'd like to see what Robert Sawyer could do with that initial premise. I picture some men spending all their money on sex machines, the way they currently might with prostitutes, and then the rest of the world just carrying on, falling in love and marrying and having babies the old-fashioned way. It might put flesh-and-blood prostitutes out of work, but there coud be openings in other fields now that men are so busy with their robots and their "iWomb" children. Would child-care become an entirely male centred activity? If so, then it's just a flipped version of the 50s, with the men home with the kids and the sex toys, and the women freed up from their mothering and sexual duties to really get powerful.

Careful what you wish for!


BUT... ONE MORE THING:

It's hard when you've been destroyed by someone close to you. It's hard when you started at square one and are now twenty paces behind in the game. That really sucks. Absolutely.

It's especially hard when your expectations of relationships don't come close to matching the real world. You know that real world, where women are more than just jizz buckets who make sandwiches; they're actually people worthy of the same respect given to men. Some women are jerks, of course they are, and so are some men. That's another part of reality that can be hard to get used to. If you come to a relationship expecting a housekeeper with benefits, then I can understand your disappointment. But it's that expectation that need to shift, not the services granted by the women encountered. That's a difficult journey to begin, but I know it's possible to get there.  This guy does a great job of explaining it all:



It can feel really good to find a scapegoat for all that pain and suffering, but this is when we have to be so, so careful about what we attack next. There's a built in reaction in all mammals: the pain-aggression response. When we feel pain, we'll attack the first thing we see. Ever stub your toe then yell at your friend for something completely unrelated? It makes sense if you're in the jungle to immediately attack when pain hits, but it makes far less sense in our day-to-day lives. I believe we have big enough brains to override this instinct - most of the time.

Here's the thing: your pain is not the fault of feminists. It's got precious little to do with the movement that helped to get women up to the same legal status as men. And attacking feminists just gets you written off as a nut-job instead of really listened to, and then nothing can change.

Stereotypes are deadly.

I work to remember this myself: When another kid gets killed by police I take a minute to remind myself of all the awesome cops there are out there who are risking their lives to keep us safe. If we start assigning the behaviours of a few bad apples to the entire group, then we'll just have so many more to hate and so few allies to work towards a better way to live and love together. We can't take sides in a ridiculous war. The stakes are way too high right now. We work together as fellow citizens of this wounded planet, or we all die trying.


ETA: This link on sex with robots:

"But for all our creativity, are we so unimaginative that we can’t conceive of any other way to interact with sentient beings besides domination? The human ability to designate subhumans (in this case, robots) represents the worst in our species’ capacity; if men by and large don’t treat women well, gynoids won’t help any more than owning slaves has made men less likely to abuse their wives. We cannot improve as a society or a culture through replication."

On That List of Excuses for Not Having Sex Floating Around the Interweb

I wanted to chime in on a facebook discussion about that list (a man made a spreadsheet of his wife's excuses for refusing sex), but it wasn't started by an official FB friend, so I couldn't comment on it.  I'm not sure the etiquette on this, so I'll just keep everyone anonymous.  Here's the opener attached to a link that suggests women never owe men sex:

This analogy seems to suggest that, like a game of badminton in which nobody actually hits the ball is not actually a game of badminton, marriage in which nobody has sex isn't actually a marriage.  That's an archaic notion of marriage, and even in more religious times the union needed to be consummated only once to be validated.  Today, sex isn't necessary to prove a marriage is valid or invalid - even in religious circles.  I know more than one Catholic who's had a marriage annulled even though there were children produced.  Having sex doesn't make a marriage and not having sex doesn't unmake one.

And this is a progression to be celebrated.  There was a time when raping a woman was enough to legally make her your wife.  Now, here at least, it's illegal.  We've come to a place in which whatever people want to do sexually between consenting adults is accepted.  It's their own business.  But one choice that's less accepted is the choice to abstain while in a relationship.  It's curious how all or nothing we are about that.

The original poster continues:

Let's look closer at "a de facto exchange of fidelity for participation."

There's nothing in marriage vows suggesting sex is a necessary part of the union, but we can skip that type of argument and look at what the culture actually believes about marriage.  I think he's right that many people accept this type of agreement - at first.  But things come up.  Kids happen and people get tired or bored or sick of playing a game that they don't enjoy as much as their partner does.  Maybe they never actually "win the game," so to speak because their partner wins too fast every time.  Whatever the reason, I think in the first blush of matrimony there may be an assumption made that sex is a significant part of the marriage, and too many people unwisely don't discuss the what if's around this assumption.  But later on, it seems some people acknowledge and often accept a waning of interest.  The mutual understanding shifts over the course of time.

I'm not a marriage advocate largely because I don't think we can actively promise to love another until we die (as explained in this), but I also think it's too much to ask to promise we'll be the same kind of person and want the same kinds of things for decades into the future.  We are beings constantly in flux, yet some marriages expect consistency.  It's wonderful when people grow and change together, accommodating changes as they arise and working through them, but sometimes the changes are too great to be accommodated.  That's just life; it's nobody's fault.

Furthermore, because many people believe it to be true, that marriage is an exchange of fidelity for participation, doesn't make it right.  Just because it is that way for many people, doesn't mean it ought to be that way.  As we evolve to recognize individual rights, we have a moral duty to respect that we all have a right to do what we want with our bodies.  If a partner wants to have sex, it has to come as a  request, not an expectation.  That spreadsheet-man's wife's reasons for saying "no" to sex are seen as "excuses" implies that he believes sex is her duty, a chore, and she's trying to weasel out of her responsibility to him like a kid explaining why she can't clean the bathroom right this minute.  But it's not a duty for her to perform while she lies back and thinks of England.  Sex is an act to be freely shared between partners.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8

Ideally marriage is about caring for another without expectation.  It's about loving another person, which is not self-seeking and keeps no record of wrongs.  It's a public gesture that makes a commitment to care about the well being of another.  Publicly humiliating a partner by posting "excuses" online shows a profound lack of care and respect.  

I agree with the writer that the couple needs to "dispel a mutual illusion."  They clearly need to have a conversation, and spreadsheet-man has approached his personal problem in, I think, one of the worst ways possible.  No matter the initial intent of their marriage, that's changed, and they're not coping well with that reality.  It's a very real and serious problem for people when they're mismatched sexually, I agree, because they've promised not to go elsewhere.  It's not like if one person wants to see a movie, and the other declines, and the desirer can call a friend.  But that's not enough to suggest the solution is the assumption of participation.  Almost any two given people will have different desires at different times, and there are myriad ways to cope with that reality besides "Participate when I want it or we're over!".

Most importantly, a mismatch must be seen as just that.  There's no right amount of sex to have, so someone agreeing to it three times a month must be accepted as much as someone wanting it several times a day or never at all.  It just is what it is.  A mismatch is a problem for both the person not getting as much as they desire, and for the person denying the request, but it's only a problem at all if people hold sex in their relationship as more important than care, respect, and love.  If you care enough, you can become attuned to one another's needs.  It might mean not asking even if you're feeling it, and it might, for some people so inclined, mean doing things you're not really into right now.  Love isn't about giving everything of ourselves to another person, though, or solving all their problems ourselves, it's about caring about their issues enough to be there while they find their own way.  

The Not-So-Awful Truth About Being Single

"If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company."  Jean-Paul Sartre

In yesterday's Globe & Mail, Margaret Wente claims that people can get to a much greater depth of understanding and "perfection" of self through a married relationship than they can possibly do if they remain single.

"...the road to self-actualization isn't through perfection of the independent self, but through imperfect, messy, long-term relationships.  Everybody needs someone else to nurture, and someone to stand up for them, and someone to plan the future with, and someone with whom they share a past."  

Wente stumbles into one of the most annoyingly common false dichotomies surrounding this issue:  either you're married or you're alone.  And she continues that single people are lonely implying, of course, that loneliness never ventures into a marriage, that it's solely a quality of aloneness.  I've never been married, yet I know too well the messiness of relationships with myriad friends and colleagues whom I nurture, stand up for, and with whom I share a past.  We don't plan a future together in the same "until death" way that some married people manage, but that shared future in marriage is often illusory.  The future is unknowable.  Shit happens, and happily married people can still end up on their own.