What Happened to Marriage?

I have a question for the men. Do you guys still want to get married? I think what you're asking is, do you want to be married? And I think that a lot of men would say, yes, I do want a partner to spend my life with. But when you say, do you want to get married? I'm not sure if you're keeping in mind all these extra steps that come before and the possible ones after. Here's a guy living in a cardboard box with his ex-wife in his house with other men. You have to keep in mind that happens with roughly one-third of new marriages. And that's only for the men who have the opportunity to get married, which is contingent upon a bunch of steps that have changed quite a bit over the years. So in order to get married, you have to date. And in order to date, you have to work and make money. And in order to work and make money, you have to go to school. And men have been facing a lot of new difficulties in all of these areas over the last few decades. So do I want to have a partner? Yes. But do I want to go through all of this again? Not right now. So you want to get married, you have to date, you want to date, you have to work, you want to work, you have to go to school. This is where a lot of male problems begin. I'm not saying that schoolgirls have it easy, but the last few decades, schoolboys have been treated like they are defective. In third grade, I used to finish my work before the other kids and I would get up and move around and they told me that was not okay. So they medicated me. When I got a little older, the other boys would start fights and I went to the authorities to do the right thing and they punished both of us. So then I took matters into my own hands and they punished just me because of these policies. They don't let boys just fight it out anymore. Those types of policies are not setting young boys up for success. They punish the way that we natively look at the world. It definitely messed me up a little and that was 30 years ago and I have no idea what's going on now. When we get older and go to college, there are all kinds of things in place to help girls that are not available for boys and they say that it's there to correct problems, but I don't think those problems exist anymore. So as we are accumulating what we need to succeed in life, boys are getting less of a head start than they used to, which is I think one of the contributing reasons for why they say men have Peter Pan syndrome and they never grow up. I think it starts here. When we get into the workplace, there are similar programs that benefit women and not men and that's an issue because women want to make equal money to men, but then they also want men to make more and support them and you can't have both. Additionally, the culture has become very inhospitable towards men and again the way that men communicate and behave and I don't know if you've noticed, but the economy is getting pretty bad and even though that affects everybody, men are the ones who are expected to pay. So this puts us at an increasing disadvantage comparative to women as we age. Then when we get out into the dating world, if you don't have any money, that's going to be a problem. If you can't compete on the dating apps, which most men cannot, that's going to be a problem. If you're not okay with her having an OnlyFans or an Instagram or whatever, it's going to take some women off the table because they have so much attention. So a lot of men are playing catch-up at this point in life when that didn't used to be the case. So our parents and grandparents did not have any of these problems. They just sort of grew up, got jobs, and married whoever was nearby. Have you ever thought of it like, would your mother have married your father if she had Tinder? Would she have chosen him? There's stuff going on in these phases of life for us that would have been unheard of even one generation ago. I once had a job where I worked with a girl. We had the same job. I had more experience. We had layoffs and later she matched with me on Bumble and came to Hookup. And I said, would you like to continue doing this? And she told me that I didn't have my life together enough. We were living in the same place, in the same job market, and we came from the same job, and I had more experience. And she was getting $120k a year to do some like women's leadership job or something. And I was driving for Uber. So, you know, I think a lot of people are really underestimating how much easier this makes things. So then if you can actually get to this point, you as a man, you have to take everything that you've managed to put together over the course of your life and put it all on the table for someone who is probably not doing the same. Even though women are not having a hard time in the workplace, men are still generally expected to provide while women generally keep more of their money for themselves. We've all heard my money is my money. His money is my money. I found this great little video about that. But I just have a quick question. My husband won't see all of my accounts, right? I have like eight different bank accounts, but my husband only knows about two of them. I've just been secretly saving for years in case I ever need to. No, say no more. I don't need to see those statements. So as far as I'm concerned, they don't exist. Yeah, so I don't love the idea that my wife might be hiding money. Of course, I'm not allowed to do that. All of my money has to be on the table. And there's about a one third chance that you're going to be taking it to party with other dudes in the house that I bought for you. Divorce laws have changed too. You used to need a really good reason to get divorced. But now it can happen just because someone is not happy. They even write songs about it. Check this out. I have to mute it for copyright. I'll read it to you. Might be the only guy who didn't send me hearted eyes in reply to my latest story. We work well on paper. We don't argue. We don't fight. But lighting scented candles just won't relight up our fire. And right there she goes, it ain't that bad. It's just not what I wanted. Don't want to live this life half hearted. Hang on, here it comes. I want fireworks and flames. Don't want safe, tame, practical. That ain't enough. That ain't love. This is the squircle of unconsciousness. It represents how people don't know how relationships work. And so they think the relationship is going to go like this and then it turns a corner. I think she's at the dissatisfied part. You can't have everything is exciting all the time. Good choices are boring. No relationships are going to be fun the whole time. They're all going to have spots where there's no fire. But she don't want safe, tame, practical. That ain't enough. That's not even love. Look how passionate she is about dumping her husband. That's real. I can spot a faker. And she even sings about other men giving her googly eyes on her Instagram stories. So this girl is what I would call an excitement chaser. She starts out her new relationships excited and over time gets bored when they're not chaotic. And then by the time we notice she's bored, she's already got a new guy lined up. And this has pretty nasty effects on us. So your relationship satisfaction is going to change over time. But your stability is not supposed to. That's what marriage is. That's what it's for. Even when you start feeling like things are not as fun, you have to remember that commitments are what gets you through the swings. I actually have a little theory that this takes about a year. Obviously, we get up and go to sleep with the sun. And women have changes in their hormones and emotions with the moon. And I think that a year is the amount of time that it takes to find somebody and have that strong emotional connection, get pregnant and have a child. It's about one year altogether. And this girl is making a spiritual experience out of a biological process. And she's allowed to end the marriage over it. So it's not that I don't want a partner. It's just that a lot of us don't have what we need to build a partnership. And even if we get it, it could fall apart immediately. She could squircle herself into believing it's not love and have a phone in her pocket with fourteen hundred horny guys on it. And then I end up here. So what you've done by fighting for equality is you've basically said, hey, you want to play a game of chess? I get all queens, though. Hey, where are you going? You guys still want to get married? Like, is that still a thing? I hope this all made it clear why it's less of a thing.