Manosphere: The Importance of Marriage (And Why Substitutes Don't Work!) (Part 1)

There’s a lot of debate in the Manosphere about whether men should get married at all. I’m a complete traditionalist in this regard. There’s no better way to ensure children are raised successfully. That there is happiness and long term satisfaction to be found in these relationship. No form of long-term relationship substitute or co-habitation substitute will ever make people as happy.

1. Dr Meg Jay says that:

Couples who cohabit before marriage (and especially before an engagement or an otherwise clear commitment) tend to be less satisfied with their marriages — and more likely to divorce — than couples who do not. These negative outcomes are called the cohabitation effect.

As Jennifer (32) and I worked to answer her question, “How did this (getting divorced) happen?” we talked about how she and her boyfriend went from dating to cohabiting. Her response was consistent with studies reporting that most couples say it “just happened.” “We were sleeping over at each other’s places all the time,” she said. “We liked to be together, so it was cheaper and more convenient. It was a quick decision but if it didn’t work out there was a quick exit.” She was talking about what researchers call “sliding, not deciding.” Moving from dating to sleeping over to sleeping over a lot to cohabitation can be a gradual slope, one not marked by rings or ceremonies or sometimes even a conversation. Couples bypass talking about why they want to live together and what it will mean.

WHEN researchers ask cohabitors these questions, partners often have different, unspoken — even unconscious — agendas. Women are more likely to view cohabitation as a step toward marriage, while men are more likely to see it as a way to test a relationship or postpone commitment, and this gender asymmetry is associated with negative interactions and lower levels of commitment even after the relationship progresses to marriage. One thing men and women do agree on, however, is that their standards for a live-in partner are lower than they are for a spouse.

George: Kezia once said to me not to move in with a girlfriend before I married her. She’s spot on. Men, don’t live together before you get married.

2. A report on how the decline in marriage is hurting children:

THE well-being of Australia’s children and young people has declined alarmingly in the past decade – and plunging marriage rates are partly to blame, a major study has found. Growing rates of child abuse and neglect, of children being placed in foster care, and of teenage mental health problems, including a rise in hospital admissions for self-harm, are rooted in the rise of one-parent families and de facto couples, violent and unstable relationships, and divorce, the report says.

Its author, Patrick Parkinson, professor of law at the University of Sydney, has called for a review of government policy to ensure marriage is not being undermined. He says it is time to question whether the nation can afford to maintain policies that give neither encouragement nor support to marriage. ”Governments in Australia cannot continue to ignore the reality that two parents tend to provide better outcomes for children than one, and that the most stable, safe and nurturing environment for children is when their parents are, and remain, married to one another,” the report says.

3. Dalrock says:

One of the more dangerous concepts of our time is the conflation of serial monogamy with actual marriage.  Once this fatal mistake is made, the foundation is set to presume that serial monogamy is therefore more moral than other forms of promiscuity.  The idea is both seductive and nearly universal, and we see it from Christians and secular people alike.  The problem is if you are thinking this way you are miles away from understanding what marriage really is, and are almost certainly providing moral cover and even moral encouragement for immorality. I think the basic mistake comes from looking at serial monogamy from a snapshot in time. Look, there are two people who love each other and are having sex only with each other, just like marriage!  Only a fool would think this.

4. Donlak asserts that:

There are risks in anything in life, and to say that marriage, all of it, is a sham just because the legal system is skewed towards females is not a real reason to fear marriage… The whole don’t get married thing seems like fear mongering on a level. I will not take part in it anymore… I am advocating marriage, but not a fools marriage. I know a ton of people who are idiots and living in a blue pill world who get married and are the poster boys of why not to get married, but are you one of those guys? I’m not… For any man that’s afraid of marriage, I say for shame. Game should have taught us more than that.

(Part 2)