A Rip on Marriage

I'm posting this as comment fodder. I guess the angle here is just the ongoing debate over whether marriage is actually good for men.

I know a lot of women question that as well.

I hear a lot of good things about marriage, too. But mostly... not so much.

Robert writes:

When you meet her, she will be soft, giggly and compliant. You will go steady.

Then one of her girlfriends will get married and I will bet my last dime you will be married too within the year. It was not your idea.

Same for house.

Same for family.

Along the way, sex will diminish, giggles will vanish and then the torment will begin in earnest. You are there to provide and to serve as the foil for occasional bouts of bitching (we need to talk!) at least one of which will occur during the final game of the World Series, NBA finals, etc. Frequency will increase, and this is about the time you begin to understand the pain of forgetting Sweetest Day.

You will escape to the garage or backyard, but nothing you do will change the fact that demands for blowjobs simply are not done, or if tried, will fail miserably. Pleading and begging is more of the truth of it.

After some time of this marital wrestling - housekeeping being only a part - she will deploy the women’s divorce playbook: clean out the checking account, run up the credit cards, file for divorce and move you out. All women know this, I don’t know how.

After a messy divorce and insults from her feminist attorney she will then set the kids against you and spend the rest of her life bitching about what pigs men are.

Some years, and many checks later, you will be free.

There will be no more pottery events, art fairs, six-hour shopping trips for a pair of blue shoes, or vacation trips to the same place her friends went. The dishes can stay in the sink one more day.

I've heard that run-up-the-credit-cards and clean-out-the-bank-accounts thing. Men do this too -- I've heard that as well.

The perverse thing is that apparently judges don't take that into account at all when setting alimony or dividing up community property. It's clearly gaming the system -- taking as much out of the marital assets as possible for one's own use, and then demanding an even split of whatever's left -- but apparently judges don't care, and thus encourage this.

This would probably be a good time to write about marriages that work. How depressing.

posted by Ace at 11:35 AM

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