Marriage: Just Say No by Darren Blacksmith
Marriage: Just Say No by Darren Blacksmith© 2003 Darren Blacksmith
Originally published by Men's News Daily
Reproduced with permission of the author
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September 28, 2003 — The forces building against marriage are insurmountable; marriage is crumbling in the West, and may soon be almost gone.
Don't do it guys. Don't get married. It hurts me to say this, as I've always viewed a successful marriage as my main goal in life, and I'm one of the most romantic fools you'll ever meet. But I can't deny reality any longer.
I address myself here to the “good guys,” the men who work hard, who treat women nicely, act responsible then get turned over by women who call them “boring” and prefer to date the bastards. Do you believe your value to a woman is purely to add a bit of color to her life, as someone to challenge her and keep her on her toes, as nothing but the bad boy who will prove to her that all men are scum? If so then by all means get married, but brace yourself for the very real possibility of what happens when your nuclear family goes nuclear.
Dating and finding a wife is a game of numbers. To get a date you are going to have to talk to a certain volume of women, to get a girlfriend you're going to have to get a certain volume of dates, and to get a wife you are going to have to work yourself through a certain volume of girlfriends. But as any serious young guy knows: Western women are sabotaging the game. They have become indifferent towards men and scathing towards good men. I don't sincerely think that older men have any appreciation of how bad things have gotten for young men looking for a date.
If you are in possession of a decent character, if you believe you have a right to keep the fruits of your labour, and that no one has the right to stop you from spending time with your own children, then consider Western marriage an extremely high-risk project. Ignore the pressures and ridicule your family and women may throw at you. You are not a sacrificial lemming whose only option is to queue up on the cliff-top and jump, hoping for the best. In the current climate, women have no right whatsoever to lecture us on the need for us to marry. They are not the ones committing suicide en masse due to their kids being taken away and poisoned against them. They are not the ones divorced for no reason then kicked out of their house and forced to spend the rest of their lives labouring simply to meet the costs of a family that now hates them.
No, the truth is that not only has marriage in the West become a losing proposition for a man, its an institution looking extremely vulnerable from a barrage of attacks from multiple directions. And you owe it to yourself to take a long hard objective look at Western marriage, its pitfalls and perils.
Already over the last three decades marriage has crumbled, and I see every sign that this trend will continue. Feminism is undoubtedly the single greatest cause of the breakdown of marriage, and this shouldn't be any surprise, it was one of feminism's stated goals from the very beginning to destroy marriage and the nuclear family, which were regarded as “patriarchal” oppression of women.
And while the odds of having a successful marriage shorten every year, the single lifestyle becomes ever more attractive for both men and women. So, even if one or a few of these forces were to be stopped and reversed, I don't believe the momentum against the destruction of marriage itself can be stopped.
There are seven main forces acting against marriage:
1. Breakdown of the heterosexual model
What exactly is a Western wife offering to her husband that she hasn't already given to other men? She may have already shared her body with tens of other men, and she is likely to submit more to the masculine authority of her boss than she will ever do to you. The age-old model of masculine/feminine differences and expectations in marriage has been totally eroded.
What we have instead of the heterosexual model is an unstable and largely self-contradictory model based on androgyny and materialism. Couples get married because it's a great way to improve their lifestyle through pooling their assets. They are both devoted to seeking power through their own careers more than they are devoted to each other. It's a temporary arrangement, only held in place until some better “deal” is on the table.
Given this, it should come as no surprise that Western governments have been under increased pressure to legalize and legitimize homosexual marriages.
2. Diminishing social pressure
It's an obvious point, but the stigma attached to “living in sin” has collapsed in the now more secular West. What begins as a “try before you buy” arrangement to live together first and see how things go, becomes entrenched as the standard, and then many people (well, men) wonder what the point of getting married would be. The momentum of this view is now so strong that I can't envisage any circumstances under which the church would be able to regain its power and insist on marriage as the only way a man and woman can live together as a couple. It's just not going to happen.
Also, not only is it increasingly socially acceptable not to marry, but also the sexual revolution is continuing at full pace, amounting to legitimizing the “swinger” lifestyle. In fact, to call someone a “swinger” is now anachronistic because their attitudes and behaviour are absorbed into the mainstream. Pornography, gay-experimentation, three-somes, sodomy, masturbation, and many different forms of sexual experience are increasingly talked about openly and less likely to be condemned. I'm not saying it's a good thing, I'm just saying its occurring. And it weakens the exclusivity of marriage.
3. Growing temptations and opportunities for cheating
Listen guys, how sure are you that you would never feel the urge to cheat? Are you sure that you could stay faithful to that one woman for the rest of your life, despite the relatively easy availability of single woman who'll casually sleep with you?
The very suggestion is monstrous!
Well, good. But here's a harder question for you to answer: Are you 100% sure that your wife will never cheat on you given the ever increasing opportunities for her to do this? If she works — which she probably will — then her chances of being tempted to stray are vastly increased. And if you have Internet access there is the chance some smooth-talking guy will start talking to her online, and before you can say “cybersex” there will be some electronic intimacy going on.
You can bet that she has already unconsciously memorized all the rationalizations for cheating on you ( “There was not enough emotional communication.” “We grew apart” ) Oprah and Rikki taught them to her.
4. Distrust and the divorce industry
With the Western divorce courts outrageously biased against men, the prospect of a divorce is particularly frightening to a hard-working devoted man and particularly tempting to a bored, restless woman.
There are huge financial interests from the legal industry to fan the flames of marital disharmony: divorce is a lucrative opportunity.
As an example of the sort of advice that divorce lawyers are capable of giving, consider the following quote from Divorce War — 50 Strategies Every Women Needs To Know To Win:
“Criticize Him Daily ...by carving into his ego like a Thanksgiving turkey, you can effectively break down his self-esteem... A man's self-image is greatly affected by his perception of his virility. If you degrade his sexual ability, you will essentially emasculate him — his entire sense of self-worth will be dismantled.”
Be aware that if your wife gets bored and hits you with a no-fault divorce, she will profit, the lawyers will profit, but you could be emotionally and financially destroyed.
The feminine, pure yearning for romance is dead. The object of the game for Western women today is to “enjoy their independence.” This is incompatible with what provokes a man to treat women romantically and commit to them.
A man looks at a good-time girl and sees a good-time, he doesn't see a feminine woman that he longs to cradle in his arms, protect and cater for.
And the dirty little secret that the feminists don't want you to know is that the good-time girl generation of Western women are riddled with sexually transmitted diseases, some of which lead to infertility. There is an epidemic. Particularly amongst teenagers, with their cellphones and email it is easy for them to “hook up,” and why shouldn't they? Ever since they were kids the TV, movies and magazines have been telling them there's nothing wrong with it.
When I now hear of a girl loosing her virginity at 12 or 14 I don't even think it unusual anymore. But what blows my mind is imagining a girl loosing her virginity at 12, and not getting married till she's 30 or 35, and seeing it as her right to hook-up with men. How many men have these girls slept with before they marry? To not expect any psychological or gynecological consequences to this is insane.
6. The pool of psychologically healthy people is drying up
Stable people make for stable marriages. This is something not often discussed because it offends a lot of sensibilities and is politically incorrect to say, but please bear with me: I'm not mentioning this to demean anyone, I'm simply stating it objectively as a force that is working against marriage. As divorce and raising children outside marriage has skyrocketed over the past three decades the harm this has done to new generations is huge. Many now are very cynical about marriage, many are psychologically harmed; they have issues with trust, they have low self-esteem, depression, or simply no understanding of how family life can work. Many who have been brought up by a single mother have contempt for the very existence of fathers. Such a population of people does not bode well for fighting against the odds to make marriage work again.
7. Increased attractiveness of the single lifestyle
Again, this has been discussed endlessly in the media: there are more perks for the single person than ever in history. Aside from the explosion of consumer choice in dining and entertainment there are now more product options for the sexually hungry. The unsavory but honest truth is that there has been an explosion of single men (and even women) accessing the vast online reservoirs of pornography. And women are now funding a fast-growing industry of vibrators (available in all varieties of shapes, designs and speeds for the “sex and the city” generation of girls); instant sexual satiation for a generation for whom commitment has become too unattractive.
If you want to have children and value the security and love that marriage has the potential to offer then you will vastly lower the risks of marriage by seeking a non-Western woman. Yes, there are indeed Western women who would make excellent wives, but the ones who would enrich your life and truly never opportunistically cheat on you or divorce you are few and far between. And the main problem is that it's impossible to identify them. I've known several women who I thought were really decent people and credits to their husband's who then decided to bale out of their marriage and took their husband for a ride in the process. You would never have guessed they'd have done this. Their husbands certainly didn't. Almost everyone now has family members (two cousins in my case) whom they now never see because the ex-wife has made it impossible.
As I said before, looking for a wife is a game of numbers and opportunities; it's just like fishing. Now, the river of the feminist-indoctrinated countries has a high percentage of fish that are poisonous to you, but the river of the traditional countries is largely stocked with healthy and delicious fish. Which river will you choose to fish in?
I'm not a hater of Western women and I am not saying this because I believe Western women are evil to the core. The reason that “no” must be considered an option for men thinking of marriage is that the lifestyles, culture and expectations of Western women are now such that its an uphill struggle to successfully marry one. Even if we totally destroyed feminism tomorrow, its effects would continue for years. It would take probably one or two more generations to purge the feminist poison from our societies. Don't think you can change one of these women; to think that is nothing short of arrogance.
I predict that as the cost and availability of travel and communication become more accessible around the globe, more Western men will come into contact with traditional, non-Western women and immediately notice an opportunity for a happy marriage. For American men this is most likely to be a Mexican or South American woman, for British men this may be the Southern or Eastern European woman, and those lucky Australian men have a vast population of Asian lovelies right on their doorstep.
When it comes to considering marriage, be a man. Don't let other people, particularly women, manipulate your emotions on this subject. Think it through rationally and assess whether you are willing to take the risk, whether you are willing to pay the price. You don't have much choice whether to let pushy, man-bashing Western women into your workplace, gym, library, or sports club, but you can keep them out of your marital beds.
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