Q & A

Q: If marriage is such a raw deal for men, why do they keep getting married?

A: I talk and write a bunch about the raw deal that is marriage. When I lay out the facts that researchers give along with what we witness in the society and culture, marriage makes no logical sense for any man. So, why do they do it?

The surprising answer to this question is that men marry for emotional reasons. Men don't want to be alone. They are not going to confess this, but there it is. I have had many conversations with men about this subject, and it always comes back to the issue of companionship. Men enter into relationships because they want to have that partner in life. At some point, the woman wants to be married, and the man gives in. He is trapped.

Loneliness is replaced with misery. Those are your two options. You can either choose a life of solitude and emptiness. Or you can choose a life of aggravation and betrayal. It's like choosing death by hanging or drowning.

Things wouldn't be like this if people were better to each other. This is why men are willing to roll the dice because loneliness is a default setting. A relationship offers a slim chance of escape. It's like choosing hanging because the rope might break.

I have already said before that I have no answer to this problem. I just know that if you stay busy enough that you can forget that you are alone. It is when you stop and have time to think and reflect that it hits you. The temptation is to think that this reflection may bring you to some answer. It won't.

I watch as a friend of mine spends each day after work at a bar dreading going home to his wife. We are opposites on this subject. I have never been married. He is on his third marriage. It is like someone pulling the lever on a slot machine until he has run out of coins to feed into the machine.

When I hear advice on beating loneliness, I hear shit like find friends, join a cooking class, and other tripe that really doesn't answer the problem. I never hear anyone say that you need to get into a relationship. This is because it is universally acknowledged that this is bad advice. This picture sums it up:



The point that I make repeatedly is that the odds of finding yourself in a good relationship are slim. The odds of finding yourself in a bad relationship are overwhelming.

There are upsides to being alone. Your stress levels go down. This is because you learn to stop caring. You stop worrying about dying because you know no one is going to miss you. Your sense of compassion expands. People become more tolerable not less. I will have to write more on this topic in a future post.

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