The National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia conducted a study exploring men’s feelings about commitment and marriage.
The men in this study express a desire to marry and have children sometime in their lives, but they are in no hurry. They enjoy their single life and they experience few of the traditional pressures from church, employers or the society that once encouraged men to marry. Moreover, the sexual revolution and the trend toward cohabitation offer them some of the benefits of marriage without its obligations. If this trend continues, it will not be good news for the many young women who hope to marry and bear children before they begin to face problems associated with declining fertility.
The top ten reasons why men won’t commit are:
- They can get sex without marriage more easily than in times past.
- They can enjoy the benefits of having a wife by cohabiting rather than marrying.
- They want to avoid divorce and its financial risks.
- They want to wait until they are older to have children.
- They fear that marriage will require too many changes and compromises.
- They are waiting for the perfect soulmate and she hasn’t yet appeared.
- They face few social pressures to marry.
- They are reluctant to marry a woman who already has children.
- They want to own a house before they get a wife.
- They want to enjoy single life as long as they can.
Let’s focus on reason #2:
They can enjoy the benefits of having a wife by cohabiting rather than marrying.
If a man has a girlfriend who provides all the benefits of a wife, why should he marry? Research shows that cohabiting couples are more likely to have children than they are to marry. I strongly advise women not to live with their partners until they have discussed marriage and feel certain of a future together. Similarly, I would strongly advise a woman not to assume a cohabitor role when you are dating someone without having reached that level of serious commitment.
Your assuming the role of wife, especially a subservient one, leaves a man without a reason to offer you commitment, much less marry. He may enjoy your relationship, and all the perks you provide, only to decide after several years that he just does not feel inspired to marry you. It’s so common it’s a pitiful cliche.
To rouse a man to full commitment, you must inspire him. Otherwise he will see no reason to change his life.
A man does not look at ten women with the understanding that he will marry one of them, and proceed to audition each for the role. A man gets married when he is certain that his life is vastly better with one particular woman in it. He wants to take her off the market before another man discovers how wonderful she is.
He must know that you have the self-respect not to debase yourself by performing the duties and responsibilities of a wife when you are in fact just a girlfriend.
Emotional attraction is created in men when they feel appreciated, and that they have inspired emotional investment in a woman. How can women display emotional investment in a way that inspires reciprocation, and a deepening commitment on his part?
Christian Carter is a dating coach for women, who wrote Why Men Settle Down with One Woman and Not Another
for eHarmony:
One of the biggest things I teach is about building a solid foundation for a lasting relationship with a man. And the way to do this is by creating POSITIVE EXPERIENCES with him. Men can’t be talked into relationships. The need for commitment arises from an emotional need deep inside a man. In order for a man to see you as a necessary part of his life, you need to create the right kind of experiences that serve to create emotional attraction in him.
A positive experience is anything that you both enjoy and that, above all, is fun. Fight the need to talk about the relationship, and instead turn your attention to creating great moments together. Do different things with him – play sports along with the usual dinners and movies. Spend time in groups of friends. Read the paper together and do spontaneous things without planning. Mix it up. All of these experiences show him that you are a woman who is easy and playful to be with, and that’s the kind of woman he’ll realize he’d be a fool to let go of.
This is the most effective strategy a woman can employ. Her efforts should be substantial, creative and fun. Unexpected gestures are the most effective in rousing a man’s feelings. Your goal should be to delight him and instill confidence that these delights are as rewarding for you as they are for him.
Positive experiences should occur intermittently rather than on a schedule or routine. A well-timed thoughtful surprise, in the middle of the week, is infinitely more effective in creating relationship value through emotional investment than buying his razor blades and socks for a year.
Positive experiences motivate a man to cherish you. They do not allow you to be taken for granted, because there is no particular expectation, other than that you will continue to be awesome and find new ways to delight him. Do not allow your relationship to become mundane or revolve around expectations that services will be performed on a schedule. You don’t ever want your boyfriend to say, “My girlfriend always takes care of “x” for me,” unless he is referring to his mind-blowing orgasms.
Here are examples of positive experiences, both large and small, that I have found effective in rousing men to become more committed in my own life:
Food
- Prepare his favorite childhood dish or comfort food. Whether it’s his Nonna’s Sunday gravy, his mother’s pot roast or his dad’s blueberry pancakes, your version probably won’t be as good, but it doesn’t matter.
- Prepare a special “TV Dinner” when there’s a game on that he doesn’t want to miss. Set it up on a small table in front of him, and join him to watch the game and eat together.
- Make a picnic during winter and eat it on the floor in front of the fireplace.
- Make a big fuss about his birthday by cooking a special meal, and inviting close friends to share it.
- Send him to work with a bento box filled with something delicious.
- Prepare and deliver homemade chicken soup when he is sick. Stick around if he wants company, otherwise serve it, kiss him on the forehead, and go.
- Bring him coffee first thing in the morning as he’s waking up.
- Plan a meal that you can cook and eat together, and do the shopping beforehand.
- Grab a bottle of wine, head to the Farmer’s Market together to buy great food, and then have an impromptu picnic in a pretty spot.
- Make breakfast while he dozes, then eat it naked in bed together.
Fun Activities
- Score tickets to some quirky event that is all about his interests.
- Ask him to leave a Saturday open and pick him up for a novel adventure, e.g. snowboarding, hiking, even a trip to the beach.
- Plan a weekend getaway for the two of you – and pay for it.
- Invite him to a family gathering, but only if it promises to be fun.
- Take him to hear a favorite author read.
- Attend a film festival or vintage movie house.
- Almost anything you’ve never done before – you do the legwork and pay.
Nesting
- Sex, sex, sex. Switch things up.
- Get stuff in at your place to make him comfortable when he stays: a bathrobe, flannel pants, toothbrush, etc.
- Wear his shirt. Men like to see women in their big, masculine clothes.
- Hibernate. In advance of a storm invite him over to get socked in with plenty of provisions, and new lingerie. No electronics.
- Take a bubble bath by candlelight, and serve a bottle of Prosecco. Wash his hair.
- Learn how to give a real, beneficial back rub and give him one, with oil.
- Scratch his back, starting with very light scratches all over his back, getting harder as you go.
- Invite him to bring over his favorite movie of all time.
Gifts
- Find a copy of his favorite childhood book.
- Find a first edition of his favorite adult book.
- Find something unusual that he has admired, e.g. tab-collar shirt.
- Add to or inspire a collection.
- Make him something. I’ve made scarves, ornaments, pillows, a painting, a table. It doesn’t matter what you make – as long as it’s personally relevant.
Your primary goal is to demonstrate love and affection. You might as well do it in a way that inspires and motivates a man to want more of you in his life. Flattered, pleased and appreciative is not enough.
The years of making a life together will be filled with routine and tedious responsibilities as well as joy. Until then, skip the drudgery and give him something he’ll always remember.
{ 444 comments… read them below or add one }
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@Susan
Everything on this list is awesome.
“Make a big fuss about his birthday by cooking a special meal, and inviting close friends to share it. ”
+1
“Bring him coffee first thing in the morning as he’s waking up.”
Ring worthy.
“Wear his shirt. Men like to see women in their big, masculine clothes.”
+ a billion.
Another note, don’t wear other guys clothes (past relationships or family)
I had an ex that always wore her brothers sweatshirt.
“Learn how to give a real, beneficial back rub and give him one, with oil.
Scratch his back, starting with very light scratches all over his back, getting harder as you go. ”
I’m having difficulty determining which is better here. Leaning towards the back scratch.
Been noticing another trend of articles asking why men aren’t marrying in the media. Yet still no mention of the virulently anti-male laws and family courts that discourage men from marriage. Regardless of how supportive and beneficient women may become, a growing number of men in our society will never get married due to the Sword of Damocles that appears at the neck the minute they say “I do.”
I feel like my relationships are always so backwards according to studies like this. For me personally, I love living with a bf without being married. I have been proposed to after having moved in with him. It’s not him that’s not in a hurry to get married, it’s me. I just don’t see the rush. I am perfectly happy being together, living together, and being unmarried.
I would have an issue with marrying a man before knowing how it is to live with him. If I married him and then found out that’s he is not willing to help me keep a clean house, pitch in with cooking, or pay half of the rent and bills on time, I would not be very happy in that marriage. I have to know before hand that he wants a wife and a wife only and not a wife in the bedroom and a mom the rest of the time to do all of his dirty work for him.
Aunt Susan you will be pleased to know that I emphatically agree with you about men NEVER cohabiting with a girlfriend. In fact I went so far as to make this an Iron Rule of Tomassi a long time ago:
https://rationalmale.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/shacking-up/
“Be a lover before you are a wife?” I co-sign 100%
First of all, girls, don’t buy him shirts. If you want a detailed explanation of why not, I can provide it.
Second, the book advice is great. To this day, the best gift I ever received was the Italian edition of Machiavelli’s works, which was the same edition used by the author of my all-time favorite book of scholarship. The reason it was so important is that the scholarly book has literally more than 600 footnotes, with thousands of references to Machiavelli’s books, all paginated to that one Italian edition. So without that edition, using the footnotes and ultimatey understanding the book would have been impossible. The book did not cost her much money but it was hard to find and it was so out of the blue, I was blown away.
Third, and most important, I see a large contradiction here:
“A man gets married when he is certain that his life is vastly better with one particular woman in it. He wants to take her off the market before another man discovers how wonderful she is.”
“He must know that you have the self-respect not to debase yourself by performing the duties and responsibilities of a wife when you are in fact just a girlfriend.”
Well, ladies, you can take this as gospel or you can consider the words of various men who say that pre-marital signs that you would be a good wife do indeed include the very things that Susan objects to so much.
Susan, before you straw-man this into “You’re saying a girl has to come over and clean your bathroom by a certain point,” please allow me to explicitly deny that.
Anyone else notice the power dynamics are almost exactly the opposite of what they were before the guy and girl start dating?
Also, this is pretty much the exact advice given to guys from the blue-pill main stream media.
Projection!
I agree with this completely. My modus operandi was never have sex (or do anything naked) with a man who hasn’t said “I love you,” and never move in with a man who hasn’t said “I can see us marrying and having kids.” Oh and he must really mean those things, with other words/actions affirming those statements.
For creating positive experiences and doing shared fun activities, my biggest thing was playing computer games. My husband loves that I play his favorite games with him while listening to the same music he loves. And I’ve always been into nerdy stuff like D&D, sci-fi, guy movies, etc. I can engage in esoteric conversations for hours, which makes both of us happy.
Also, sushi. It’s his absolute favorite. He also likes to eat out and try new restaurants. I’m frugal, but this is one thing I don’t turn him down on because I know he enjoys it so much. It’s a good thing we have similar tastes and like similar activities. The online gaming thing keeps our activities “fresh” because there are always new ones and new updates. Plus, the sex ratio is skewed, and girls are very few!
@Lokland
I wanted to clarify that it is very important for women to show care and attention to the men they love, just not in the way we were debating yesterday. I truly believe this strategy is far superior.
Ashley aptly demonstrates that it is women who are eschewing marriage in their sexual prime, not men.
The study should have been about why men are avoiding marrying post wall Alpha crumbs.
@TMG
I highlighted the risk of divorce in the list of 10 reasons. Why the need to hammer it home again when it has nothing to do with the post? In fact, more young men than women say they intend to marry.
http://blog.match.com/2011/02/04/the-forgotten-sex-men/
This is an interesting statement. What will you be willing to do for your husband, in addition to sex?
@Susan
I’d rather go for the all around approach.
This stuff is really good.
I’ve also decided the back scratch is by far preferable.
Should be noted that working left to right from top to bottom is far preferable and don’t forget to reach around the sides a bit.
Note: this trumps doing laundry.
Scratch that.
Circular scratching motion over shoulder blades and upper back.
Smaller circles moving outwards.
Then lower back what i said above.
@Rollo
Funny how we reach the same conclusion from very different perspectives. Re cohabitation, I did not say it is never advisable. In my own experience, cohabitation was a greater financial commitment for me than my husband, because we shared all our resources and I was making more, but the truth is that by living together we both saved a ton of money over living separately. It is extremely financially efficient, and therefore quite useful for a couple intending to marry. In our case, our sex life went through the roof, as we were together much more frequently. Highly recommended.
This statement is just so sad and pitiable that I don’t even have to heart to rebut it.
Food – yay
Snowboarding – yay
Arts and crafts – yay
#4 in the gifts section made me smile.
SW, money quote for the win:
“A man gets married when he is certain that his life is vastly better with one particular woman in it.”
@Escoffier
I want the explanation! I just scored three Thomas Pink shirts for my husband at Nordstrom Rack for pennies, and he was thrilled.
That is exactly the response women should be going for.
It is clear that performing wifely duties before marriage lowers the value of marriage, and therefore of the woman. Sex is the biggie, but very few men will wait for that post Sex Rev, so we must turn our attention to the next biggest reason men delay marriage. All the benefits of marriage, not only with cohabitation, but even from a girlfriend who has her own place!
No man ever proposed in appreciation of a good scrub of anything but his back.
“8.Invite him to bring over his favorite movie of all time.”
“Lesbian Spank Inferno”? really?
Coupling (i.e. not that movie, but where that movie was invented)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKGK2fplV_w
Patrick (the guy with the hair) thinkks the woman next to him is a lesbian. She thinks he is gay (the hair – duh!)
oh, and the ‘gay’ couple sleep with each other – both thinking that they were hawt enough to convert the other.
and the clip IS SFW
I have much to say but I am so sick to my stomach over this vileness in Connecticut that I can’t think straight at the moment.
The feminists must be very proud that
“1.Sex, sex, sex. Switch things up.”
is recommended, but cleaning the frigging shower when it’s full of your hair is verboten…
the religious…not so much
@Hope
Those are great ideas!
Haha, I’m a lover of back scratches too! My husband gives me at least two a day, and I love that feeling of his chasing the itch around and catching it!
Like I said, Sex on the first date? Why not, hook-ups are the gateway to relationships. Do your dishes before marriage? Hell no, what kind of girl do you think I am??!!
Feminism in a nutshell.
@Escoffier
I had no idea what you were talking about so googled CT news. 18 children, my god.
@Just1Z
If a woman fills the shower drain with hair every time she sleeps over, she needs to see a Dr. tout de suite. But your objection to prioritizing sexual variety is duly noted.
All the way down to Kindergardeners. 5y/o.
I mean, what do we have to do? Homeschool? I’d hate to take them out but this country is becoming … I don’t know what … or I suspect I do …
Great post.
My only quibble is that I don’t believe in cohabitation before marriage; there’s too big a chance that you will give up all you’ve built for yourself and end up with nothing. I’ve seen people sell homes or condos and get rid of half their stuff only to have to rebuild a year or two later. While I spent loads of time at DH’s before the wedding, the moving van with my stuff arrived after the honeymoon.
The book did not cost her much money but it was hard to find and it was so out of the blue, I was blown away.
One of the best things I ever got DH was a signed, out of print book that he’d been hankering for. I paid more for shipping than I did for the book.
I love this: “A man gets married when he is certain that his life is vastly better with one particular woman in it.” These days, what other reason is there to marry?
As to shirts (and ties, too), DH returns just about everything I buy unless it is exactly like what he already wears. I can replace existing items, but I never buy anything different. If I want to play Ken doll, I buy for my sons. They love my taste in clothes.
As to backrubs, DH has a narrow window of sensation that he likes, and it took me years to learn to do it right. He’ll never find another woman who can do it, so BWA HA HA HA HA! He’s screwed without me.
@Just1Z
my comment was more about changing social standards meaning that cleaning his pipes was preferable to cleaning the pipes.
but hey, you go for it
Taking shortcuts with that “feminism” stuff, are we? It seems to me it has to do with women refusing to do things for a man that he himself won’t do for you in return. I believe it is about not being taken advantage of. Men also do it and it keeps the balance in relationships. People can define what their expectations when they get married, since marriage is a common enterprise.
Even those “evil” feminists get married and some have healthy relationships; it is about entering marriage knowing all there is to know, and defining stuff before, not just “hoping” it works out and be disappointed because things don’t work out the way you assumed it would. Like Susan said, it is about equity; I’ll do nice things; I hope they’re appreciated, not expected, otherwise they wouldn’t be qualified as nice, would they? They’ll just be a “job”.
Suzan.
Great post. More like this please.
.
11. weeding out sluts is a multi-year process
.
Re the Conn. shooting–
The shooter appears to have been an emotionally disturbed young man of 24 and his intended victim was his mother. He apparently shoot up her whole classroom.
my comment was more about changing social standards meaning that cleaning his pipes was preferable to cleaning the pipes
Well, one IS more enjoyable than the other. I’ve yet to climax while scrubbing the toilet.
The shooting in Connecticut is just awful. I started crying at work and had to stop reading about it. It’s 10 days before Christmas! The kids would have presents waiting for them… that they’ll never open…
Equity is cool, no problem with that. fair trade and all that is all good.
again; my comment was about the changing of attitudes in society.
Susan has previously said that feminists with their, “women can have sex like men”, were wrong. It was not true of many women. now, it seems, it’s less significant than cleaning your own hair out of the shower…wow, bit of a shocker TBH.
I’m glad women enjoy ‘it’, that they’re not just laying back and thinking of England.
I don’t recommend that men get married.
I don’t recommend co-habiting either (all they need to do is redefine marriage as cohabiting for more than X years…cue family court)
I co-habited before my marriage, I would not ever have considered marrying without that level of sharing of life beforehand. Given that I ended up divorcing the psycho…this article has much to recommend it. lmfao
I can’t imagine anything worse than losing a child.
I don’t recommend co-habiting either (all they need to do is redefine marriage as cohabiting for more than X years…cue family court)
And they will too–if for no other reason than to give baby daddies the same rights and responsibilities as married fathers.
“I co-habited before my marriage, I would not ever have considered marrying without that level of sharing of life beforehand. Given that I ended up divorcing the psycho…this article has much to recommend it. lmfao”
Funny that you don’t consider the possibility that maybe, you should not have co-habited before marrying, it could have brought a different outcome.
I personally don’t want to co-habit before marriage. I’ll only consider it if a proposal for marriage is made and a date is set for a year from then. I’m the type to just elope anyway. We’ll go get our marriage license and then plan church and party for parents later.
@Susan
This post is on the money. The Connecticut shooting is another level of evil. Heinous doesn’t even come close.
Ashley’s POV that she needs to “test” the guy out before committing to see if he keeps a clean house or helps pay the bills is quite shallow. Living with someone is NOT the same as being married. You can play “house” and share bills, but there is a deeper connection you make when you get married….However, only those who truly commit experience it.
Now, there is a lot of divorce today and I believe that many people get married for the party, rings, gifts etc. and do not make the emotional committment required to build a solid mariage. I have been married for 17+ years and it has not always been hot sex and fun. Marriage is about compromise and being selfless and there are so many women and men out there who are selfish and unable to give more than they receive. When you get married you have to be 150% “all in.” Living separate, but equal lives does not work. If you bail at the first sign of troubled waters, you should never have married in the first place.
Also, I have known plenty of people who got divorced after 10+ years because they were living separate lives; just roommates sharing a house and kids together. They did not nourish their relationships and fed them with love, appreciation, sex and support. Being married does not mean one gives up everything about his/herself. However, it does mean that one always considers their partner and family before making numerous decisions. That is being a responsble, married adult. Roommates, fu*k-buddies and those that play being married generally lack that sort of consideration.
I cannot tell you how often my wife’s divorced or never-married over 40 friends tell her in private how depressed and unhappy they are because they have no man in their lives. Thye fear they will never be deeply loved. They have good jobs & $$, dogs & cats and even kids, but nobody in “their camp” except for 600 Facebook friends and other single, depressed women over 40 with kids, cats & dogs.
There are plenty of men out there who may keep a messy room, closet, car etc. but are solid guys willing to stand behind their wife, children, in-laws etc. without question. When real-life happens like the horror in CT today or when your mom gets cancer or you lose your job or you end up in the hospital from a car wreck, you do not care if your husband cleaned the kitchen.
You want to know if he is there for you; keeping you upright, strong and doing the things to ensure that you, your child, your family etc. are taken care of and are helped in getting through the situation. The sad fact is that women like Ashley worry so much about how well a guy keeps a fu*king bathroom clean that they disqualify the ones that matter.
@Mireille
good for you *hugs* n *kisses*
seeing as you have all the answers, I’m sure it’ll all work out fine
also, she didn’t move in until after she had proposed and I had accepted, so by Susan’s standards it was all pukka
In almost a decade of counseling guys as a mod on the SoSuave forum the single most common situation I’ve dealt with is guys complaining that their girlfriends lost all interest in sex once they moved in together.
The girlfriend was a tiger in bed (and not in bed) before they shacked up, the guy thinks that having her live with him will only provide him greater sexual access, he moves her in, she gets comfortable, and within 3-6 months their sex frequency goes to less than when they were single.
All because the competition anxiety, genuine desire and sexual urgency she felt when they were dating motivated her to want to bang the guy with intensity and frequency.
What guys don’t understand is that they lose their most valuable resources in cohabitation – privacy and their ability to maneuver.
^^ If that is true, then it should happen in marriage too, no? And we know that it does but in what % of marriages? “Studies show” that on average married men have more and better sex than unmarried men. Maybe not more than the most successful players but more than average. It may be a meme that marriage=automatic bed death but it does not appear to be universally true.
In any event, in most any relationship whether married, shacked up or whatever, sex frequency and intensity is likely going to go down as passion inevitably cools, people get older, etc. The standard should not be to keep it at the same white hot level forever but to keep it good (enough) to make both parties happy and the marriage successful.
@Rollo
Your argument would obviously imply the same drop in sex after marriage, in which case the advice would be “don’t get married.” Yet people who cohabit or are married have considerably more sex than singles.
The fact is that sexual frequency does change over time in most relationships, though not all, and may be affected by many factors. Men who want to remain single and experience sexual variety should obviously not cohabit. Access to sex is actually a very poor reason for cohabiting.
Why would men in a committed relationship leading to marriage require privacy and room to maneuver? It seems to me that you’re simply saying it’s harder to instill dread when you live with someone and can’t pretend other women are calling you up, chasing you, etc. You are revealed in all your ordinariness, and since you do not trust the woman’s attraction, you are now the one confronting increased anxiety as your cover is blown.
So many strawmen, and so little time!
The Connecticut shooting is another level of evil. Heinous doesn’t even come close.
The shooter apparently shot another relative prior to going to the school. I am assuming that he is psychotic. What can you do?
My kids’ high school runs these “safety drills” that are aimed at being prepared for an atack by a terrorist or psychotic, but I feel pretty certain that if the worst happens those drills will be useless.
@Rgoltn
+1 on your whole comment.
I actually have almost zero expectations of my husband around helping in the house. We have a kind of unspoken rule that he cleans up after dinner, but I “work clean” and he rarely has to do anything but stack the plates in the dishwasher.
If I were working full time I think it would be similar – he wouldn’t do housework, but we’d hire more people to help.
I do expect him to not throw his stuff around for me to pick up, and that’s never an issue. He is actually neater by nature than I am.
When our kids were little he did pitch in with them on the weekends, which he enjoyed.
I personally believe co-habitation is a pale substitute to marriage. People decide to co-habit after they realize they spend a lot of time together at each others place. However, the euphoria of merging lodgings must dissipate quite quick. Moving in with someone when no clear marriage plan has been made is not as charged emotionally as when someone tells you that they are welcoming you in their life for good imo. It truly believe this is why pre-marital sex and co-habitation were shunned in the old age. The newness and energy of a young marriage is what is now put at the early stages of dating. By the time co-habitation comes around, there is not so much crazy enthusiasm and I’m not surprised some women lose interest. Co-habitation is not the same as marriage. Very few couples can maintain such excitement and work at renewing and refueling that energy over the long term.
J, those types of people need psychatric help, but unfortunately good care is expensive and often not sought at all.
Rgoltn, that was a good comment. When we lost our first boy to stillbirth, my husband was right there with me. We are closer now than we were when the “new relationship energy” was high. What we have now is simply irreplaceable.
Athol Kay has built a small financial empire with MMSL due entirely to this not being true.
Most chumps view cohabiting as an ideal arrangement. Few of them really have the real options, much less the will to experiment exercising them, to see shacking up as anything but a great way of exiting the SMP, limiting potential rejection, and locking down a consistent supply of pussy.
Men who are spinning plates, men with options, men with ambition, rarely see cohabiting as anything but a limiting hinderance on their lives. On some level of consciousness women understand this dynamic; guys with options (the Alphas they’d prefer) ordinarily wouldn’t consider cohabitation.
So when a man agrees to, or suggests living together it impresses her with two things – either he is an Alpha who she’s won over so completely that he’s showing signs he’s ready to commit to exclusivity with her, or he’s predominantly a beta with no better propositions than to settle into living with what he believes is his ‘sure thing’ sex.
What’s jarring for a woman is that she may start her living arrangement thinking she’s found the elusive Alpha ready to commit, only to later find he was just a clever beta who reverts back into his former, comfortable, AFC self after they sign the lease agreement.
Have you seen the movie Blue Valentine? It’s a great illustration of this.
@J
“And they will too–if for no other reason than to give baby daddies the same rights and responsibilities as married fathers.”
that’s right – don’t cohabit.
What people don’t understand is that they lose their most valuable resources in cohabitation – privacy and their ability to maneuver.
FYFY–There’s a huge opportunity cost to women as well in moving in with (or otherwise being exclusive with) a guy who hasn’t committed.
Look at this poor dumb bitch who wasted 6 years on a man who couldn’t commit:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2247192/My-mortifying-moment-Christmas-party-hell-48-desperate.html
I have mentioned my friend who is divorcing a narcissist. He somehow conned some dumb slag with two kids into moving him with despite the fact that the divorce is far from being settled. She writes my friend little nastygrams about her dilemma in living with the narcissist who has undoubt promised marriage and the unfairness to her in my friend’s “dragging out the divorce.” My guess is that once the divorce is final, this guy will not be so anxious to commit again. In the meantime, the slag has sold her home, moved her kids in a new home and school district away from their friends and exposed them to a man with serious issues, and has made herself a factor in the lives of two other kids who are in the midst of their own acrimonious family situation. No ring, no date, just a big house that she’ll be kicked out in a few years.
In the meantime, she could be out meeting a good guy or maybe even patching things up with her ex.
that’s right – don’t cohabit.
It’s a problem for both men and women. Not to invalidate the positive experience of some here, unless there is some firm commitment and a whole lot of trust, it’s a set up for having all the problems of marriage with none of the commitment to solving them.
those types of people need psychatric help, but unfortunately good care is expensive and often not sought at all.
Indeed.
“Athol Kay has built a small financial empire with MMSL due entirely to this not being true.”
No he hasn’t. He’s built a website to help those for whom it is true. He nowhere claims that such men are the majority of married men or anywhere close. The best data we have suggests it’s not only not true, but that the truth is the reverse.
I don’t know what the %s are, but even if (say) 20% of men were stuck in a sexless or sexually unsatisfying marriage, that’s still a huge audience in absolute numbers for someone like Athol. Yet 20% would still be only a fraction of all married men.
@J
I wouldn’t marry without spending a lot of time with a woman first, but I can see where you’re coming from. Both of ‘us’ wanted to live together, my regret (given that we divorced) was that we ever got legally entangled. Splitting after >5 years would always have been painful, but legally simpler if we’d never married. Her dad was still paying off the marriage celebrations that she wanted – but then he was part of what created the problem (imho) so, some justice was had (I guess, fwiw, no real joy here for me).
I, personally, would never marry someone without having plentiful nooky with them first. But I’m pretty sure that Mireille is correct in that a no-sex-before-marriage marriage between virgins gets the carnal relationship off to a rocking start. In fact you would probably have to use a tyre lever to seperate them for the early days.
On the whole I’m glad those days are gone, but did we have to go so far with the sex-posi stuff? I don’t see that that has done much for women or society, and men have just adapted to the marketplace.
As I said recently, the TV media has just ‘discovered’ sexting between school kids in the UK. I’m sure that it and the associated sex acts have been going on for some years. I think that that is kind of sad, that kids don’t get to be kids. just mini-sexbots without self-value.
The Stats, per ABC News:
Very Satisfied with Sex Life:
Married/committed under 30 77%
Singles under 30 53%
Frequency of sex:
Never: 23% Unmarried, 1% Married
Few times past month: 26% Unmarried, 43% Married
2-3 times per week: 19% Unmarried, 36% Married
4 times per week: 7% Unmarried, 7% Married
http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/959a1AmericanSexSurvey.pdf
Your alphas:
Alphas of your description are unsuitable for LTRs, cohabitation or marriage.
Cohabitation can work if the two individuals are each mature, stable and ready for a healthy relationship leading quickly to marriage and family. They should also be very much in love, not just looking for convenience or sex. Otherwise, the risks are numerous to both sides.
My husband and I moved in with the acknowledgement “this is a precursor to marriage,” but since we had only known each other for two months, and that was mostly long-distance, getting married right away would have been too big of a leap. We got engaged 4 months after moving in together, and got married 6 months after the engagement. We were not girlfriend/boyfriend for long, because from the beginning we saw each other as much more than that.
We did have some issues in the beginning when we first moved in together, but we solved them, and after the first two months we haven’t had anything like that since. It’s the time to sort out any issues, incompatibilities and deal-breakers. I would say you can tell pretty quickly, within 6 months, whether it’s going to fall apart or turn into a good marriage. But maybe that’s because we had both taken the red pill.
p.s.
sorry you guys have had your own Dunblane. sounds similar to an incident here 16 years ago. horrific.
I don’t think you read this news when it broke:
http://marriedmansexlife.com/2012/04/you-dont-need-cancer-for-permission/
How much does an RN make these days anyway? One would think that going from bankruptcy to being debt free and quitting ones (relatively) high paying job would mean there’s a rather large pool of people ready to buy your book to support that.
You’re only making my points for me.
The fact that he was able to quit a job that even he admits was low paying does not even suggest, much less prove, that the majority of married men aren’t getting laid. Like I said, even if the % is 20%–hell, even if it’s 10%, or 5%, or 1%–the hard numbers would still be so high that he could easily make a nice living dispensing such advice.
The majority of people are not in counselling or therapy, yet the absolute numbers are high enough to support hundreds of thousands of psychologists and psychiatrists–much less one Athol.
My grammar is atrocious and getting worse by the day… ugh. I think I’m still in a daze about the shooting. What sickness prompts someone to open fire on young children?
@Hope
Psychosis, I’m guessing. The voices in his head told him to do it. Bad brain chemistry. There’s nothing here we’ll be able to understand. If they can ever get him on meds that make him lucid enough to understand what he did, he may not even recognize himself in today’s events.
IIRC, there are Kinsey numbers that show married people surely do have the most frequent sex, over cohabitors, and both are way ahead of singles. (I think there is *one* age block where the cohabitors have the advantage at the high end.) Yeah, there are large numbers of people who are married and cut off, and Athol surely has a decent market, but the market of people who don’t need his help is much bigger.
@Susan
Awesome post.
Girls, do this for a man who loves you, or in moderate amounts for one who is showing interest as a way to ramp up the emotional connection.
Don’t do it on someone who has no (or not enough) interest in you (possibly because he’s out of your league or doesn’t see you as gf material) and then complain that men don’t appreciate such things.
Well, this guy apparently planned for a year back in 1927 when he apparently tried to blow up an entire elementary school.
At least today’s guy didn’t have unlimited access to the school like this school board treasurer did.
He was probably listening to the voices, too.
“The Bath School disaster is the name given to three bombings in Bath Township, Michigan, on May 18, 1927, which killed 38 elementary school children, two teachers, four other adults and the bomber himself; at least 58 people were injured. Most of the victims were children in the second to sixth grades (7–11 years of age [1]) attending the Bath Consolidated School. Their deaths constitute the deadliest mass murder in a school in U.S. history and the third-deadliest non-military massacre in U.S. history, behind the Oklahoma City bombing, and 9/11.
The bomber was school board treasurer Andrew Kehoe, 55 who died in a car bomb he set off after he drove up to the school as the crowd gathered to rescue survivors from the burning school.
On the morning of May 18, Kehoe murdered his wife by beating her to death, then set his farm buildings afire. As fire fighters arrived at the farm, an explosion devastated the north wing of the school building, killing many schoolchildren. He used a detonator to ignite dynamite and hundreds of pounds of pyrotol which he had secretly planted inside the school over the course of many months. As rescuers started gathering at the school, Kehoe drove up, stopped, and detonated a bomb inside his fragmentation-filled vehicle with his Winchester rifle, killing himself and the school superintendent, and killing and injuring several others. During rescue efforts searchers discovered an additional 500 pounds (230 kg) of unexploded dynamite and pyrotol planted throughout the basement of the school’s south wing. Kehoe apparently had intended to blow up and destroy the whole school.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster
Rgoltn, shallow would be expecting a man to make a certain amount of money or more or something along those lines. Don’t we all test a partner as we date them to see if we can be happy being married to them? You make it sound like I’m playing a game. I feel I’m just being smart. I know what type of guy I will and will not be happy with, and I’m doing what needs to be done to make sure I end up marrying the right man for me. I think a big reason divorce happens (especially when it happens within the first few years of marriage) is because people are marrying the wrong people for themselves. They aren’t waiting nearly long enough and they aren’t giving themselves the opportunity to meet more people. I see friends of mine getting married to people they barely know, because they think “Oh I’m in my prime now, must get married and have babies now!” That is if they don’t have babies first and feel they “should get married” because if you get knocked up, it’s the best thing to do when most often than not, it’s not the best thing to do because their relationship usually struggles more than what it’s worth or they end up divorced.
I don’t know why married people look down on single people and act superior. I see so many people my age in marriages I can tell they don’t want to be in afterall. Why would I make those same mistakes?
Also I’m happy to say that after 5 years of living together, we still have great sex every day. Sometimes twice.
“Also I’m happy to say that after 5 years of living together, we still have great sex every day. Sometimes twice.”
That’s just, uh, [insert appropriate word here]. I’m not sure what word adequately describes this news.
Is it Internet etiquette to offer congratulations?
I’m also not sure what emotion I’m supposed to be experiencing here.
I don’t need a congrats, I’m just saying what these studies and conclusions based on the studies are saying doesn’t necessarily ring true for everyone.
not for me either Ashley
Glad to be of help
Cad Awareness is an important part of my curriculum.
The use of Athol as proof of the state of marriage in the US is insulting to intelligence and common sense. What we can say is that Athol has a readership that finds his advice useful, and some portion of that readership purchases his book.
There are 55,200,000 married men in the U.S. Let’s generously assume Athol has sold 500K copies of MMSL Primer. That is .009% of the married male population in the US.
It’s .9%, not .09%.
Not .009%.
Susan is right. It is 0.009%
500,000 /55,200,000 = 0. 00905%
@Han Solo
I didn’t even think of saying this, thank you! Yes, this is very important! The calibration is key – do too much of this relative to the level of male investment and you will be nothing but a pest. He doesn’t want to hole up with you during a snowstorm. On the other hand, if he’s showing steady interest and you dig him, don’t hold back! Do a little more than you feel comfortable with, and see what kind of response you get. If it’s positive, keep going!
@Hope
Today’s events make a good argument for the existence of God, because f God exists, Heaven exists, and is Heaven exists, Hell exists. I think I’ve got a pretty solid guess as to which one of the two the gunman is in now.
Ugghhh. Youse broads are confirming the stereotypes about broads and math. It’s either .009, or it’s .9%, but it’s not .009%
Apparently Susan and Sassy can’t compute percentages…
@ Passer_By & INTJ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percentage
Whoopsie. My bad for adding in the % sign. It’s .9%. The difference is completely immaterial to the argument, the point stands.
Wait, scratch that.
I forgot to move the decimal two places over. Haha. I was wrong.
*giggles*
@ Susan
Not really immaterial. 1% is huge. If he managed to sell 500,000 books, we would need to take that pretty damn seriously.
Of course, he obviously hasn’t sold anywhere near that many books…
Not in this case! Rollo’s claim was that Athol’s readership proves that married men are not having sex. What we can say is that at the very most, 1% of married American men have gone online to seek advice about their sex lives and found Athol. I’m sure there are many more who haven’t, but Rollo’s claim is ludicrous.
@susan
I think it’s a real stretch to claim that every married man who went online to seek such advice ended up buying Athol’s book. That would make Athol the greatest Internet marketer of all time.
Having said that, I have no idea what the underlying argument is about, so I’m not sure why I’m bothering to correct anyone. lol
Haha, true. I have no idea about MMSL, but every day 65% of my traffic is first-time visitors. The vast majority of people are hit and run.
It’s because someone on the internet is wrong. This can not stand!
What’s an Athol?
Isn’t Rollo married? He’s probably talking about his marriage when he says that most marriages are sexless. Anyway, I wouldn’t put much stock in what a PPB(Professional Pussy-Beggar, aka PUA) has to say about anything. They’re like the male version of femnisim, except they can beg for sex while making it appear stylish.
” What’s an Athol?
”
Some dude on the internet with a blog. He gives advice to married men. Don’t know the URL.
Married Man Sex Life
It’s nice to hear some advice about…you know…actually making people happy.
I’d say as a guy, there’s 2 things that freak me out about marriage, after the “I do want to marry this girl” point -
1. That we’re going to get married and the fun will die off and stop. Whether it’s sex, conversation, or her making an effort, or the start of nagging or manipulation, etc etc etc…if we have something good going right now, will simply getting married change all that?
2. Wedding hell. It seems like weddings have become more and more a chance for the girl to stress out, have lots of breakdowns over insignificant details, spend a huge amount of money – and just generally put a ton of stress on the relationship that makes you wonder – if I go through 3 months of hell that she causes, are my own feelings for her going to change?
I don’t have answers for these questions, these are just the things I would be concerned about with a girl that I would want to be dating forever.
@Susan:
You realize that a woman who does even half what you recommend will have a man wrapped around her little finger, don’t you?
WRT Athol Kay, I seem to recollect that he figures his readership is half female. And I suspect a fair number of the men are single – but interested in Courtship/Marriage Game, not PUA Game. The whole Game world is fissioning, and people like Athol are at Ground Zero.
About Connecticut
In the ’80s we had a rash of standoffs that ended with the police shooting the guy. They finally started calling it “suicide by police”. We don’t seem to get as many these days. Maybe the police have learned how to avoid doing the dirty work. Maybe it has stopped being a fashionable way to do it. Maybe insurance companies are invoking their suicide clauses.
I think these mass killings may be something along the same lines. They are cowards who can’t pull the trigger on themselves without the buildup of killing helpless people.
I recommend expunging mass shooters’ names from all public records and flushing their ashes down the toilet.
@Feelist
Rollo is not a PUA. Stop making yourself look like an idiot.
By the way people, totally off topic, but what’s the verdict on online dating sites for males? I did sign up for OKCupid a few weeks ago, but promptly stopped bothering with it after searches done through a dummy account showed that there was a plethora of high quality guys on there that I would be competing against, in contrast to the low percentage of high quality females that I would be competing for.
However, I did just notice an e-mail telling me my profile made the cut for the higher rated profiles, which means they’ll match me with other high rated profiles.
Should I start actively messaging women there? Or is that futile and should I simply ignore OKCupid (unless someone happens to message me)?
@INTJ
I just did a search of men for women and women for men on OkCupid and there’s a 3:1 male to female ratio. You can do these yourself and count if you want to spend the time. On pof you can search and it gives the total number and I have found about a 2.5 to 1 ratio, depending on the age.
So, I would recommend trying it a bit but don’t waste too much time on it. The girls get tons of emails and can be really picky.
Girls should all be doing online dating for this very reason–massive numbers in your favor.
I have reasonable success with it. I met the girl I’m kind of dating from online so it’s possible. They just need one and you might be it but there will be 2.5 similar guys to you for every girl looking for your type so it’s a bit of getting lucky.
This girl said I look better in real life than in my pics so I think I need to maybe get better pics or learn better how to approach in bars. Social circle is a great way to meet girls too since it gives them more chance for you to shine.
@Han Solo
Uh… doesn’t this fail the “What if everybody did it?” test?
@Joe
Yes….
But they should anyway so that we can have 3:1 ratios. lol
@ Paul Rivers #98
I will cosign that. Also, when you’re in your early 20′s, the concept of “till death do you part” is kind of scary, atleast to me – given modern life expectancy, that’s a a *really* long time, and if you pick wrong, well, there are many possibilities as to what happens & they all suck.
@ Dinkey Pawson #100
I second. I would advocate dumping their ashes at sea, or feeding them to pigs, to ensure there is simply no physical location that anyone could turn into a pilgrimage site or anything. Also, pressure should be brought to bear on the media not to publish the names or photographs of the gunmen, so they can’t achieve any notoriety, they just get remembered as “some psycho nutjob.”
If women outnumber men as a whole to begin with and a much larger men are in prison, and if bars are sausage fests as I’ve heard people claim, and there are 2.5 men for every woman on dating sites.. that begs the question as to where the hell the women are.
*much larger amount of men
@Bully
That’s what I’ve asked myself. I did go Salsa dancing last night and there were probably about 30% more women than men out of a group of about 50 total people.
The other place is college campuses, obviously. Yoga classes. Wine tasting, maybe?
I’ve asked myself that often and I think a lot of women must not be going out that much. Or maybe they’re in coffee shops and restaurants?
Great question. Where are the women?
They’re all at chick flicks.
Or drowning their sorrows downing tubs of Häagen Dazs.
According to the latest survey, yoga is 80 % female, 20 % male (and half those are Sensitive New Age Guys). It’s not something that you can just jump into though and start raking in the hotties. I should probably write a guide for good behaviour in the yoga studio.
Many women are subsumed in the rat-race, or sitting at home knitting. I bought a pretty toque today.
Yoga wouldn’t be a bad idea except I’m weight training 6 days a week as it is and adding yoga on top of that seems like a bad idea. Powerlifting women.. yeah, they don’t exist, Not at the four gyms I’ve been to, anyhow.
Dance.. hmm, I may try that in the spring. I’m really tall and gangly, though Just about Thurston Moore/Joey Ramone tall, and really uncoordinated when it comes to moving around. Being tall isn’t such a bonus when you look like a goof.
Even at my corporate rat race the women are all like 35 minimum; wouldn’t be too bad if I was older, but I’m barely turning 30. Maybe it’s because I’m not in sales – that’s where most of the hotties I’ve seen pass by are.
Sucks that the ratio online is so bad, but it’s still the best out of most my options, it seems, so I might have to focus my attention there.. Oh well – I just bought myself a Christmas present (a 72-key digital piano) and spent about three hours practicing tonight, so I guess dating will have to wait a little longer till the spring while I work through my latest obsession.
Athol is promoting his stuff specifically to married men. Do I even need to point that out?
Jezebel is predictably milking the CT shooting for all its worth. Of course, the one thing they, or any other similar media outlet, won’t mention is that the shooter is one of the typical and predictable male products of the matriarchy. Such killers are dime-a-dozen in matriarchies. Just check out the news reports, both archived and recent, from Liberia and the Congo. Guns, video games etc. have nothing to do with it.
They’re all at chick flicks.
Twilight events too.
About the massacre
I had refused to read anything about it but general comment. Is just too much, I don’t think I will be able to sleep again or stop crying ever, if I start to see the names and faces of the victims… poor children
@INTJ
Online sites are like therapists if one doesn’t work you should keep trying IMO. I tried half a dozen before hitting the jackpot so to speak.
“Your assuming the role of wife, especially a subservient one”
What culture are you living in?
I mean, what do we have to do? Homeschool?
Homeschool or die, mate. Granted, I intended that as a metaphor for the intellectual lobotomies delivered, not literally, but unfortunately, in some cases it fits both ways.
What can you do?
What the Israelis do, arm the teachers. If, instead of wasting money on guidance counselors, psychologists, and a small army of administrators, schools invested in arming each teacher with a S&W revolver, putting them through a training course, and hiring two ex-military to serve as entrance security combined with a sniper team to provide overwatch of the entrance, there would never again be a school shooting with more than 2-3 victims. The schools can afford it, but anti-gun ideology and the preference for the illusion of safety trumps actual security.
The fortress approach doesn’t work. It’ s hardly news; the Chinese learned that with the failure of the Great Wall.
Susan is right. It is 0.009%. 500,000 /55,200,000 = 0. 00905%
Oh, sweet Barbie! Math is hard.
This article should be titled “How to set the perfect trap”.
My wife’s first comment was, “The solution is obvious but no one will even mention it: arm the teachers.”
Our school is very good, no lobotomies being delivered but homeschooling may yet happen for us anyway.
@Joe
Nobody goes there anymore; it’s too crowded.
Yogi Berra
One very different from the expectations some men here have! If you’re just tuning in, we’ve been debating whether girlfriends should clean their boyfriend’s apartments as a sign of MMV. I say no way, the guys say yes please. I’ve never heard of it IRL, aside from some reports here.
@VD
I fear that the vast majority of home schooled children are getting a very poor education. All spelling bee, no math, that kind of thing.
Also, I’d point out that the blogs appear to be heavily populated by home schooling moms, who are alarmingly available for chit chat during the school day. At least in schools teachers are not free to surf the net and debate gender issues during class.
Why there is a war going on :
How can a man, any man, argue against that ? Throwing the MRA manual at her, won’t do. Being a good SO won’t do. It’s impossible to win against this. So what then ?
MGTOW
This might now sound popular but sometimes I think cleaning is a way for a woman to mark the territory so to speak. Given my workload, and the fact that I’m a fairly active person, cleaning usually gets bumped down the list. I’m by no means a sloppy person but ill sometimes skip the hard to reach places.
My ex-girlfriend cleaned my apartment a few times (she also clandestinely placed clothes and toiletries in the apartment.) the first time my sister visited from college, and without knowing I was dating someone, instantly detected that a female had cleaned there. Don’t ask me how. It’s also happened other times. For what it’s worth quite a few of my friend girlfriends or ex’s cleaned or picked up some.
@ HanSolo:
Lol!
I tell my friends all the time, straight guys on dating sites have the worst pictures! It’s endearing though! Most guys do not take pictures of themselves, so the ones they post are picture their friends or family of taken. Candid shots, etc. The guys who have good pictures are usually questionable – if they’re “too” groomed in their photos they ping my gaydar.
The bonus is, without fail every guy I’ve gone out with that I met online looked way better in person
I met my bf online and I told him when we met up I had no idea what he really looked like. He looked different in each photo, lol.
@ Höllenhund:
He also has a healthy female readership. There are plenty of women posting who bought the book and are doing FAP (female action plan) to improve their marriages.
FTR, there are women who are trapped in sexless marriages too! I don’t envy anyone, male or female, who are high desire partners who are marriaged to a spouse with a low sex drive..
Yeah, that was an epic fail on my part. I looked at the numbers a few times over and realized my mistake.
@ Iggles
I think that most people look much better in person than they do in pictures. I’m not overly enthused about the way I look in pictures either.
@Marellus
it’s all projection. if you want to see real, crazed hatred of a gender take a look at RadFemHub, or the Agent Orange files (he infiltrated and exposed the misandry of wingnut central). Some of those women are teachers FFS
@Sassy
It was entirely my fault, and it’s not the first time I’ve typoed in that pesky % sign.
@J
“Look at this poor dumb bitch who wasted 6 years on a man who couldn’t commit:”
Do you think this article is for real? She looks like a 60-year old man in drag. Her hands are very large for a woman.
@Maggie
yeah, I didn’t want to say, but that face!
it might well be instructive to hear his side (should be be interested in giving it) about why he didn’t or wouldn’t commit. I mean maybe couldn’t is a possibility too. Was she an active part of his divorce?
but six years is a lot of time to waste, whatever the underlying truth.
@ Sassy:
True. I think it’s rare for a photograph to capture what a person looks like in real life. Professional photographers have the best equipment and are trained at capturing the best look. Amatuers, not so much – and the web is saturated iphone photos.
Still, women take pains to post their most attractive photos. Guys by and large post whatever photos they have.
@ Marellus,
I think RadFems are too far gone to listen to logic. They’re in the same category as MRA exteremists. They’re married to their position and that involves hating the other gender.
There’s no explaining it. You have to have serious issues and/or be a repressed homosexual to write something like this:
I find that woman’s comment disturbing.
Rest assured, I don’t think any women on HUS would agree with this. Women and men need each other for humanity to survive. On a personal level, women and men thrive when they have a loving partner in their lives!
Esco
“My wife’s first comment was, “The solution is obvious but no one will even mention it: arm the teachers.”
I think its sad that it never occurred to me to arm teachers, but that is a really good idea.
@ Susan
I know you hate anecdotes and all that, but I used attend the Berkeley Math Circle. There was a 13-year-old home schooled kid there who won the spelling bee in 2007. He was also brilliant at mathematics. Us high schoolers struggled to keep up with him.
Yes, but those moms are still a very small minority of all home schoolers.
@Just1Z
I know of Agent Orange. And I know that the rape-argument is the type argument that no man can win against a woman.
It’s too emotional.
It’s too confounding.
Any dispassionate recitation of numbers to poo-poo it, will fail.
As it must.
We are headed for more acrimony between the sexes Just1Z.
We are headed for more isolation between the sexes Just1Z.
We are headed for an explosion of rapes Just1Z.
We are going to see militant fringe philosophies on gender, go mainstream Just1Z.
We are going to see a legislated separation of the sexes Just1Z.
We are going to see a preponderance of mental disorders because of this Just1Z.
Adolescent boys will become objects of inordinate fascination Just1Z.
Suicides of young girls will skyrocket Just1Z.
And the remedies applied, will only exacerbate this Just1Z.
So when a man and a woman decides to become a couple, it will be seen for it really is, Just1Z :
A Miracle.
My company’s lead engineer was home schooled. His parents traveled often for work and it wouldn’t have made sense to put him in a traditional school just to transfer him repeatedly. He swears by it, and has ironclad mathematic skills and is overall a very intelligent, but the lack of social interaction as a child is pretty obvious. That’s where I would be concerned. There’s a lot that children pick up being in a large social setting. You can tell from the get-go that something is off with him.
FWIW, very few of my HS teachers were people I would want to trust with a handgun in a room full of people. If something happened, they would have been hit first, or shot one of us by accident. I say this as someone in the military who has fired pistols before, and they are surprisingly hard to aim, even standing still on a range with no one shooting at you or screaming in terror.
Armed security makes a certain amount of sense, though if you need armed guards outside each elementary school I fail to see how your country can then turn around and call itself the land of the free and the brave.
Homeschooling-A friend of mine from uni was home-schooled up until Gr12. Extremely smart academically, but even after living in a house of guys for a couple years & working on Parliament Hill, his social skills aren’t the best (no where near as bad as when I met him though). I feel that home-schooling may give you good academic skills, but you aren’t the most well rounded person due to lack of social skills, understanding how to live with bureaucratic rules (my schools always had enough), lack of shared experiences with your peers, etc.
@Marellus
I appear to be slightly more optimistic than you, which is nice (and not very hard to achieve).
I have never seen MRAs hitting the absolute levels of hate as seen in radfemhub. killing all males, castration etc. They appear to be cracked. AVFM is covering the University of Toronto feminist activity at the moment, you can see videos of the actions of what they get up to. The most negative ‘MRA’ site I’ve come across (not that I ever went on a determined hunt) is run by a guy accused by his divorcing wife of DV and paedophilia with his own kids. He was very lucky to be able to prove that it wasn’t true when the police investigated, she had planted photos on his PC, I don’t know how the proved they weren’t his – but he did (no penalty for her was forthcoming). Family court just took his guilt as read (in spite of the police report) and stripped him of everything including his kids. He has very little time for women, but I have never seen any hatred beyond don’t trust ‘em, and seeing no value in them beyond P & D sex, at which he is very ‘good’. I don’t blame him as I haven’t been put through what he has, I just don’t share that outlook or set of values.
I don’t think that there is an MRA mirror of RadFemHub. But having said that, I have absolutely no interest in seeing one. It’s not how I feel and never has been.
At the end of the day, the vast majority of the MRAs that I have ever come across would drop the flag as soon as the misandric laws and societal ways are dropped. They aren’t interested in revenge, but they aren’t going to be much interested in chivalry ever again.
Having said all that, I really see the next apocalypse being financial. I’m sure that there will be attitude changes and laws between the sexes, but that is going to be a by-product of the rolling back of the social state rather than direct action. Nanny state will be broke, that will change many things, mostly for the worse for everyone. YMMV
It is true that there can be socialization problems with home-schooled kids, but it is also true that there is a lot of not-so-desirable socialization that goes on in schools, especially public schools. Some of it is due to herd behavior among other students, some of it due to the schools themselves (viz “self-esteem” inculcation.)
I’m sure there are honorable exceptions, but by and large the administratiors of America’s public schools are a bad lot, as are the ed-school professors who have had such a malign influence on the field.
VD…”What the Israelis do, arm the teachers”
First problem is that the teachers here are, mostly, sort of different from the ones in Israel, the vast majority of whom have served in the military and who also consciously understand that their society faces mortal threats. Second problems is that it could never be done politically…consider the squeals from the liberal media when, in the wake of 9/11, the commonsensical idea of **arming airline pilots** was first mooted. Indeed, the Armed Flight Deck Officer program *still* faces pretty lame support, and a lot fewer pilots are armed than should be.
@INTJ
I know little about home schooling. Are there federal or state standards that must be met? Is there monitoring? What is to prevent a woman of fairly low intellect giving her own children a bad or at least incomplete education?
I know that some home schoolers are part of networks that share curricula, pedagogy, etc. Others seem like rogue outposts.
Further to that, if you go back through the history of various social movements in the late 19th/first half of the 20th century, there were a lot of teachers (women) heavily involved, and many became very influential in their respective organizations. Then feminism and the 1960′s came about, and since then it almost seems that a lot of teachers go into the field because they can’t do anything better. I have friends that have done teachers college and are passionate about the whole thing, but I know others that wouldn’t have come close to making the grade 60-70 yrs ago when it was one of the few professions open to women.
This is not to say that the past was better, just a comment on the unexpected consequences of changing the labour market.
@Iggles
Well, since online dating is here to stay for me I will have to test my pictures on a female focus group. lol
But, I do need to go beyond that too.
@ Susan
No federal standards. State standards are fairly mild, and there’s nothing to prevent a woman from doing that. It’s a constitutional rights thing. Pennsylvania had the strictest standards, where my mom would have to fill out a form and give a detailed description of what all curriculum she was teaching. In Oklahoma, people can just pull their kids out of school (or not send them in the first place) without filling in anything. That is scary. In California, we filled out a form to create a “private school”.
Yeah it totally depends. In Pennsylvania, my mom started home schooling after my older brother’s elementary school ran out of stuff to teach him, and my mom knew a homeschooling parent. That homeschooling parent had built a nice network there which shared a lot of stuff.
When we moved to Oklahoma, we only networked with other home schoolers for the purposes of social interaction during school hours. No academic networking, as almost all the home schoolers home schooled for religious rather than academic reasons.
When we moved to California, at first we enrolled in a Home Study program, which meant we were technically public school students, but just were enrolled in an unconventional school. That ended when I needed to do higher level Calculus and Physics but the local school district didn’t have course numbers for those… That’s when we created the “private school”. Networking wasn’t as big an issue because the Bay Area has lots of academic activities in general (like the aforementioned Berkeley Math Circle), and having sent off my older brother to college, my mom pretty much had the whole thing worked out.
@Just1Z
I’m in a sour mood today. It happens. Nonetheless, your points have merit, and for all I know, the future will look like a Peter F Hamilton novel … barring a reality dysfunction … heh.
@Esc, Ion, VD
Last night I saw Piers Morgan on CNN go ballistic that it was all gun control’s fault. A total emotional blowup, totally devoid of any appeal to facts, the likes of which I think I’ve never seen in a “mainstream” host. Some of the opposing point of view presented facts about how in countries that banned guns (like the UK) that the murder rate went up and that the Colorado Batman massacre was at the one theater closeby that prohibited firearms. He had made up his mind and all facts be damned. He compared the murder rate in the US vs the UK, as opposed to comparing what happened in the UK after guns were banned.
I don’t know enough about the risks either way to say whether teachers should be armed but I think it’s work looking into. If the risks of an outside assailant are greater than the risk of a teacher going on a rampage or having her gun stolen by a student who then uses it then it should be implemented.
@VD (& Susan)
Hum… a commentary!
But I have to challenge the notion that homeschooling is that bad. Consider that, if asked to imagine the best learning environment possible, most people would come up with something like: “safe and familiar surroundings, with a (very) small student to teacher ratio, with teachers who care about and concerned with the well-being of their students.”
That’s a home and parents. Homeschooling may not be ideal for some, but by any objective measure, there’s no way public schooling is better. I doubt even private schooling is better.
Also, I think there are some gun control laws that would make sense like a background check at gun shows and so on.
@Marellus
I’m just plodding through ‘The Great North Road’ by him. I think that they’re about to encounter the …..ah, well we’ll see man.
I read the neutronium alchemist trilogy – 7″ of great story telling, and have been trying to summon up the courage to tackle the void trilogy (on kindle, but still a whopper). I’ve been trying for a couple of years iirc.
Iain M Banks and Neal Asher have been good. That old ‘who goes here?’ by Bob Shaw was funny though, the tale of ‘Warren Peace’ (not exactly like the tale by Tolstoi) – very different style from modern day stuff, great story telling.
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