The liberally educated person is one who is able to resist the easy and preferred answers, not because he is obstinate but because he knows others worthy of consideration. – Allan Bloom
Only two questions this time, though both are fairly long ones. If you have one you’d like me to answer, please email me at maggiemcneill@earthlink.net; I’m a bit slow with my correspondence lately but I should still be able to answer you within a few days.
I’m in my twenties and single, but very much do want to get married some day. I know that as a wife it will be extremely important to keep my husband sexually satisfied as best I can; I also know that if I don’t, I’d much rather he meet his needs with a hooker than an amateur since, like you’ve mentioned time and time again, the former is likely to be discreet and not destroy my marriage. However, even if I do perform my “wifely duties” well, do you think it’s still inevitable that a man is going to cheat for sexual variety? And if so, how would one go about having a conversation about it with a husband prospect? “I’d really prefer if you didn’t cheat on me at all, but if you do, please do it with a professional!”? I feel like that’d encourage a man who wasn’t even thinking of such a thing to go for it! I know this is probably a strange thing for me to be stressing over when I’m not even so much as engaged, but I’d love to hear your perspective!
No, it’s not inevitable; roughly 67% of all married men cheat, which still means about 1 in 3 don’t. And you have to remember that those figures are for all marriages, with bad or inattentive wives mixed in with the good, attentive ones. I would suspect that if we could figure out a way to only survey the husbands of good wives, that number would be much lower. It would not, however, be zero; I suspect it would be something like 20%, the fraction of men who see whores “occasionally” (I don’t have any specific rational basis for this comparison; it’s more like an educated guess modified by instinct). Given that, I don’t think it’s at all silly to have the conversation you suggest at some point. I’m not suggesting you just blurt it out in the middle of sex or dinner, but sooner or later a related subject is bound to come up and you can segue into it. He will almost certainly insist that he’ll never do that, and he may even really mean it at the time, but years later if he feels the need he may remember what you said and take the harm-managed path. Don’t worry about “giving him ideas”; when it comes to sex people will invariably think of such things on their own whether you mention it or not. Plus, you can certainly stress that you’re not exactly giving your blessing to his hiring hookers, but rather just telling him that the professional option would hurt you less and you’d find it easier to forgive.
Your stressing about it now is indeed “strange” in the sense of “unusual”, but not in the sense of “weird”; in fact, I think it’s a sign of remarkable good sense. Most girls never even consider these things, and as a result they tend to react that much more badly when faced with the revelation that their husbands are not superhuman paragons of virtue. In fact, I suspect that a young woman who can think so clearly about an emotional subject like this is much more likely to choose her mate wisely and to consider factors like economics and sexual compatibility rather than simply rushing into marriage in a biochemical haze, and that will dramatically increase your chances for a good match characterized by mutual honesty.
A little over two months ago, I met a whore with whom I share a social chemistry that I never experienced with a woman before, and I feel such intense affection for her that I equally look forward to our conversations after my basic physical need has been satisfied. At the same time, I respect our professional boundaries; I feel scheduling an appointment with her once a month does the trick. I have become much more responsible in my personal life. I feel better motivated to tackle life’s challenges, get my sleep and exercise, keep my space clean and organized, feel more at ease around others, and am more affectionate with my family. I no longer feel as though I have resigned myself to a cheap substitute for a conventional relationship. Even more bizarre, I have begun to feel that compensating a woman is more natural than conventional relationships. Have I gone nuts? Perhaps I’m romanticizing this too much? Secondly, do you think it’s plausible for a whore to have such a quasi-intimate relationship with a client, genuinely feeling some affection for him that doesn’t cross professional boundaries?
Your question is kind of tangled, but I’m going to tease out what I think are the pertinent strands. First of all, as I’ve written many, many times before, there really isn’t a bright, clear line between prostitution and dating (or even marriage) as people like to pretend. All lasting relationships have an economic component, because once the flare of biochemical passion fades there needs to be something more substantial to hold the partners together, and mutual economic benefit is about as strong a glue as there is. That does not preclude genuine affection, however; most everyone has had the experience of genuinely liking a customer, employee, boss or co-worker despite the fact that the relationship is primarily an economic one, and though I love my husband I also recognize that our socioeconomic arrangement is the bedrock of the relationship. Expressed another way, economics is the cake, and love the icing, not the other way around as modern Americans like to pretend. So, answering the last question first: Yes, a whore can have genuine affection for a client and vice-versa, and since some whores feel no need for sexual companionship outside the job, I can’t see where the opposite couldn’t be true.
Next, you have to remember that the male need for sexual variety is pretty powerful, and more so in some men than others; though some men certainly yearn for a lifetime companion, others may prefer serial monogamy and still others may be perfectly happy with getting their sex from women and their companionship from deep male friendships. The idea that every man (or every woman, for that matter) must or even should form long-term relationships that combine social, economic and sexual factors is asinine; though such relationships are often rewarding and are probably better for raising children than the culturally-available alternatives, that doesn’t mean they are right for everyone, or that everyone is going to crave them. So no, you’re not crazy for finding your relationships with whores rewarding and satisfying; what’s more, you need to stop looking a gift horse in the mouth. If you’re happier, better-adjusted and more productive now than you’ve ever been before, why question it just because closed-minded bigots might not like it? The only person you have to please is you, and if you’re accomplishing that you’re in an enviable position. Keep on the way you’re going as long as it works for you, and if you ever arrive at a point where it doesn’t any more you can calmly take stock of the situation and proceed from there.
“do you think it’s still inevitable that a man is going to cheat for sexual variety?”
I am one such man who did not cheat. And even so there is no benefit for a man who does not cheat. In divorce my wife claimed “all men cheat so you must have cheated”. This, apparently, dismisses 23 years of being faithful. And I was a man who travelled extensively and was offered hookers all over Asia.
I think women would be very well advised to discuss among themselves what benefits there are for a man who remains faithful. I think you will find the answer is there are none. And where there is no incentive? Why would men remain faithful. You women steal our children in divorce no matter how good we are. Let us not forget Katie Holmes has sole custody of Tom Cruises child.
So if Tom Cruise is not good enough yet as a father? Well? Why would any of us men bother?
It is a sad reflection on modern society and the success of anti-prostitution propaganda, that anyone even needs to question the possibility that a client and a prostitute can actually be friends.
The only danger is in the client seeing a prostitute’s professional courtesy and care as something more than it actually is, just as many men may feel romantic affection for the nurses who care for them when they are ill in hospital.
“roughly 67% of all married men cheat”
I never heard/seen that statistic before. Do you have a source for that figure? I’m not doubting you, it’s just really surprising.
I have seen estimates all over the map, but “two in three” used to be pretty standard up until a few years ago, when agenda-driven researchers chose to ignore the whore factor and started redesigning the questions in such surveys to “correct” the discrepancy between male and female cheating rates by lowering males’ rate of reporting and inflating females’ rate. One way of doing this is to change the old question “have you ever had sex with anyone other than your wife since you were married?” to the whore- and one-night-stand exclusionary “have you ever had an affair?”, which cuts the male rate down to below 20% (very close to the female 15% rate) because most male cheating is not a repeated relationship with a mistress but rather an intermittent thing with individuals.
So unless you believe that men are more faithful than they’ve ever been in history, it still stands that about 2 in 3 (67%) will have extramarital sexual contact at some point in their marriages. Dr. Helena believed it was closer to 90%, but she had only her Masters & Johnson training and professional experience to back that up rather than a study per se. In my professional experience, that’s a bit too high.
Maggie,
I have also seen you mention that 15% of (married?) women cheat. Could you cite the sources for that as well? Also I wonder what the figure is in unmarried committed relationships.
Thanks.
Damn, y’all are going to make this hard on me; those figures are the ones I learned in my sexology courses at university, and finding them on Google’s “What’s Boolean mean?” search engine is going to be a pain. Still, since the question was asked I will go a-digging and try to have the answer as soon as possible.
I’m on “I know what Boolean means” EMBASE, and will give the question a whirl as well.
From a quick run through I found Wiederman (1997; Journal of Sex Research, 34, 2, 167-174), who used a representative, national (US) sample and found that…
22.7% of ever-married men reported ever having extramarital sex (4.1% in the last year), compared to 11.6% of ever-married women (1.7% in the last year).
Of course, the percent having ever had extra-marital sex goes up over age, so looking at the age groups the lifetime rates max-out at 34% at ages 60-69 years among men and 19.3% among women aged 40-49 years.
… I can’t find anything newer that recruits a representative sample off hand.
On the topic of seeing whores, Rissel et al. (2003) [Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 27, 191-197] did a representative sample study (Australia) and found that 15.6% of men had ever seen one (1.9% this year), The lifetime rate maxes out at 19.5% for 40-49 year olds. No data on women was presented. [note: this is the most methodologically sound study on the topic that I’ve ever seen].
I find modern (post-’80s) studies generate considerably lower numbers; could you find some older (’60s-’70s) studies for comparison?
I’ll try a bit later tonight, but a lot of databases start to run out of steam when you get back that far. I wouldn’t be too hopeful of retrieving original papers from the 1960s. I know the introduction of Wiederman (1997) cites some studies from back then, and even provides some of their basic stats.
My guess is that the differential in rates is caused by newer studies using representative sampling (vs. convenience sampling in older surveys).
That may be part of it, but I’ve also noticed the sly wording changes, for example “procured a prostitute” in newer studies vs. Kinsey’s “paid for sex”. The newer wording is calculated to reduce the number of positive responses, just like “had an affair” vs. “had sex with someone other than your wife after marriage.”
There’s nothing that I can find from that period as a primary source, but I did turn up a review paper from 1983 that does actually review a bunch of papers all the way back to Kinsey’s original work (1948). The range for the cited studies for extramarital intercourse are from 20% up to 66%. The 66% figure is from a 1981 study that (supposedly) uses a representative sample. That number lines up pretty much exactly with the figure you’ve put out (although it’s the high-water mark in the literature as far as I can tell). The average of all the estimates is something like 44%.(though that’s not weighted by their respective sample sizes; just eyeballing it the weighted average would be somewhere in the 50-55% range.
For women the estimates range from 10% to 69%, with an unweighted average of 31% and a weighted average somewhere in the area of 20-30%.(some sample sizes aren’t listed, so I’m just assuming they’re not disproportionately large).
Hi, Maggie,
given the American propensity for 1/3s and what I’ve seen in studies (granting what you’ve said about wording), it’s likely 1/3 of women cheat and 2/3rds of men cheat. I say that because it is so much easier for a woman to cheat than for a man if a professional isn’t involved. I don’t see any studies on women using professionals, and I wouldn’t assume that women need the service versus men. There’s a really simple and obvious reason for that.
As for Kinsey, he was a really bad sex researcher. He had too much baggage, not much better than Kraft-Ebbing.
You still remember the figures you learned in university? That’s quite the memory you have.
Oh, yeah; I wrote most of my academic papers from memory, then went to the library to dig up the actual books for attribution data. It was very, very rare for me to mis-remember a datum.
Maggie, you would have made a great scientist.
Damn you, integral calculus!
Well, with men, cheating with hookers can be a big conundrum.
For instance, I’m finishing up a month long business trip right now and, for the last month all I have been able to think about is my wife and how much I miss her – and can’t wait to see her again. However, i started out the month by frolicking with six women over three days at a German Fkk (basically a brothel) – with a few days with a “free” girl I know in a foreign country – which I swear will be the last I “trist” with her. I like her a lot and all – but she’s really off-limits according to the rules I try to play by because that tends to get a bit emotional and she’s married too.
So on one level I feel like a complete shit – but then again, sex with those beautiful women certainly didn’t dampen my love or devotion for my wife. She doesn’t know about it – I don’t tell her what I do when I’m away. I have a feeling she knows something but doesn’t care as long as it’s not in her face.
My basic rules are I don’t do anything in the U.S. and I don’t do anything that will compromise my wife’s health. Sooo … it’s always “safe sex” and it’s always overseas and always at the start of a very long trip so that I have weeks to ensure I haven’t accidentally “caught” something before reengaging with my wife.
I have broken the rules a few times though – with “free” women … I still wouldn’t take any of them over my wife. But that’s the only time I feel really, really bad because it’s breaking my rules and also compromising my wife’s health because, even though it’s safe – it usually just “happens” and doesn’t come with a quarantine period that I require as a rule.
So, as a dude – I can’t resolve these things logically in my head and it starts to hurt and get tangled when I think about it all. So I try not too very often. VARIETY is definitely my “poison” and there is no way my wife could be the hundreds of women I desire. Sometimes I justify it by saying that she doesn’t give me everything I want – and certainly, due to age, her desire has dropped way off. However, I think that is just an “excuse” I tell myself sometimes.
A funny thing … my wife is not as young, or as beautiful as these other women are. And, some of these women do things in bed that would blow any man’s mind – but, in my mind … my wife is still my sexual partner of choice. I’m just amazed by this. The best and most meaningful sex I’ve ever had is still with my wife. And I still get hot when I see her body or even hear her voice.
Am I a bad person? I sometimes think so. Then again, I AM a very good husband and I shower my wife with affection. I make a good living and I’m a good provider and I actually help my wife with the housework. I’ve raised kids to adulthood and they are all well adjusted and productive members of society and I’m still close with them. So … a bad person? I don’t know. I tend to remind myself that Thomas Jefferson was a good guy who had certain vices also.
There is no way to rationalize trying to have one’s cake and eat it too. And, “Tommy does it too!” is no excuse!
Gee I don’t know. According to the heroic Nicholas D. Kristof, lots of men are having sex with sixteen year old slave girls. Hey, Tommy did it.
Sixteen? According to Kristof and company that’s practically over the hill for a sex slave.
Good point. I guess ol’ Jefferson had a thing for old ladies.
Hi Maggie,
First, I believe men are biologically wired to cheat. From an evolutionary standpoint, it’s advantagous to spread the seed around, create as many combinations as possible. Monogamy is an artificial state imposed by society and religion, and it is difficult for both men and women to maintain.
I think that goes far in explaining that 2/3 stat. Often, when men cheat, it doesn’t mean they don’t love their women. It’s just too tempting to pass up.
That being said, it doesn’t mean there aren’t lots of good men out there, the 1/3 who don’t cheat, who realize there’s much more to a good relationship than sex and keep it in their pants so they won’t tarnish their bond and hurt their women. In terms of choosing a mate, i’d say find someone who’s had lots of sexual experiences, someone who’s sated as much as that is possible.
Also, the length of the relationshiip has to come into play. If a man cheats once in decades, that’s really not so bad. It’s the ones that are going around looking for sex all the time that are problematic, and this goes for women too, though I admit men are more likely to transgress.
As far as your compensated relationship with the other women, I’d say if it feels right and you’re uplifted by it, go for it. But keep in mind that when you pay for a service, you may not be getting total sincerity. Which gets me right back to how important it is to be able to read people, and have good judgment when selecting a person for a long-term relationship. And there are no guarantees, no matter how careful you are. It’s a crap shoot, and there is always the danger of being deeply wounded, but you have to take that risk to find out is you’re soulmates or not.
Ron
“And there are no guarantees, no matter how careful you are. It’s a crap shoot, and there is always the danger of being deeply wounded, but you have to take that risk to find out is you’re soulmates or not.”
I am sorry, Ron, but this is plain stupid. First of all, there are no “soulmates.” It’s bullshit. Sure you’ll get along with some women better than others, but there are no “soulmates.”
Second, for the man, the price much more than getting deeply wounded, unless by deeply wounded you meant that his wealth and children are taken from him.
You do NOT have to take the risk.
So, guys – stay single.
While I can see where you’re coming from, G, I think it is sad and as equally unrealistic to be as jaded as you appear to be as to be Pollyannish about relationships.
Both to you and to Peter-Andrew: Nolan (c) above, as one who has been through four divorces and knows full well how the legal deck (at least in the U.S. and probably several other of the so-called developed countries) is stacked against the person with a penis in divorce, I still think that there is room for relationships and affection between people. The problem is not with relationships, which by their very nature will be good, bad, and indifferent, the problem is with the institution of marriage and the twisted and unfair legal and judicial framework in which it exists. I think the state has no part in people’s relationships and, rather than spreading the unfairness, marriage regulated and licensed by the state should be abolished and replaced with individual agreements — enforceable ones, not like the current charade where a judge can overrule any agreement — between the parties.
As for soulmates, I think it is a lot like belief in a (G)god. Maybe they/(I)it exist, maybe they/(I)it don’t, and it is a matter of individual belief and faith. If I believe my mate is a soulmate, maybe she is. I can’t prove it, nor can she, in scientifically or statistically acceptable terms, but if we believe it, and feel it who are you or anyone else to say that we’re not soulmates?
The one thing I beg to differ with Ron/bridgesareforburning on is — FIRST see if you are soulmates, and THEN take the risk to see if things work out. Better to burn the bridge before you get to it if you’re not soulmates than having to do it afterwards. And if there is one thing I have learned through my various tours through the so-called “family court system” (sic), it is — take necessary steps to protect yourself (such as avoiding joint bank accounts, just as one example) in case things do go south and your soulmate turns the other edge of the proverbial sword of love on you.
Yes, hope springs etermal — but without it, where are we, really?
Hotlix,
“While I can see where you’re coming from, G, I think it is sad and as equally unrealistic to be as jaded as you appear to be as to be Pollyannish about relationships.”
What’s wrong with being jaded? It’s a protective mechanism justified by the social/legal climate I find myself in. I am surprised that YOU, after four divorces still aren’t jaded. What’s it gonna take? Do you also play Russian Roulette?
I have no problem with relationships, just don’t get married, and think very very long and very very hard before having children. And if the laws in your country treat cohabitation as marriage, then don’t cohabitate. Basically do what you have to do in order to keep the state out of your relationship. You will find the woman’s true colors when she brings up marriage and you explain your reasons against it, and she leaves you or better yet tells you’re “sad” then she has tipped her hand.
I would say don’t have children (which is my plan), but I realize many men will still want children.
If you have children you’re bringing the state into you life. So really, in the current legal climate it’s stupid to have children as well.
“The one thing I beg to differ with Ron/bridgesareforburning on is — FIRST see if you are soulmates, and THEN take the risk to see if things work out.”
Sure take the risk while she, not only takes no risk, but is in fact granted the ability to steal your wealth. Even if you don’t get divorced, you will have to live with that fact constantly hanging over your head. Any implied threat of divorce will quickly put you in check and you will have no power and no say in the marriage except that granted to you by your master (wife).
Men,
If you are aware of all this, and you still get married, then you deserve everything that happens to you. No whining about it later.
Damning others because they don’t agree with your personal values is despicable.
Take it easy Mr. Wells. This isn’t about my personal values. Whether I want to marry and have children is irrelevant. I am not saying don’t do it because it’s not the right path in life. I am of the
I am saying, open your eyes, consider the risks, then if you choose to take the risk, you can’t complain.
“I am saying, open your eyes, consider the risks, then if you choose to take the risk, you can’t complain.”
The fact that I take a risk does not negate the evil that others do in response to my actions. If you don’t understand that, you are a monster. If you do understand that, you have no business telling me that I can’t complain.
I see your point and stand corrected.
I think I was frustrated that men weren’t heeding my (and many others’) advice to avoid marriage.
I still maintain that this wasn’t about my personal values. I was damning others, but not because they were disagreeing with my personal values, but because they were disagreeing with my assessment of the risks.
The truth is if (when) a personal friend divorces I know I will not be saying “I told you so.” I will have empathy.
Your evaluation is that the worth of marriage is outweighed by the risk of harm from divorce. Others value marriage more than you do. Others see factors in their lives that mitigate the risk or which make the potential harm less significant. Others may give lesser value to future risks than you do. Personal values, all of these, and unless another has such values that are similar to yours, your advice is bad advice.
In theory I agree with you, so long as men actually do see the risk and still choose to marry. But in practice men typically do NOT asses the risks and benefits accurately. When men evaluate the worth of marriage they often evaluate what they imagine their marriage would be like based on the various falsehoods they’ve been brainwashed with. Such falsehoods as the idea of “soulmates.”
Often men are corralled into marriage by emotional manipulation and false promises. If a man has the wrong idea about how his marriage is likely to turn out, then he cannot fairly assess its worth against his personal values. There is lots that can be said about the risks, but I’ll limit myself here to just a few of them.
First there is the bait and switch tactic: explicit and implied promises of lots of sex and love forever followed by withdrawal of said love and sex after the wedding. Sometimes (though not typically) the very next day. This is not necessarily malicious or premeditated, but it happens nevertheless. I believe many women are sincere when they make these promises, but one still cannot rely on them. Women are just not very good at predicting their own behavior down the line.
Human’s have a tendency to believe their own lies. The bait and switch tactic is further made possible by the fact that women are perceived as angles rather than potentially dangerous predators who believe their own lies. I know it sounds harsh, but you cannot deny reality. (Men can be like this too, but we have plenty of coverage of men’s flaws, real and imaginary).
Then there is divorce with all of its consequences.
No, not all women are like that. Maggie, for instance, said that she declined alimony from her first husband. How many women like that are there? Just a handful. Yet all the men who get married think that THEIR woman is like that until they’re bitterly disappointed. This shows you that men aren’t good at predicting their women’s behavior.
In addition, I challenge the idea that men HAVE to take the risk. They have no such obligation. I challenge the idea that men have to put aside their wishes and their self-interest in the name of duty. Many of my personal friends married out of a sense of obligation, not because they weighed the risks and benefits against their personal values. For example, one friend married to please his mother.
Now you might say that this sense of obligation is also a personal value, but I would disagree. It is a value imposed on the man via social pressure and the man is free to reject it.
Furthermore – all this bullshit is masked from the man’s consciousness by the biochemical processes that we refer to as “love.”
I am only asking men to reconsider how they perceive the risks and benefits. If a man re-asses the risks and benefits as per above and STILL chooses to marry, well then it’s his choice. But if he is evaluating the risks and benefits of marriage through bullshit-colored glasses, then I I’d like to first help him clear off the bullshit from his glasses.
It is like when the tobacco companies insisted that smoking isn’t harmful to one’s health. At one time they even ran advertisements with doctors endorsing cigarettes for their healthful properties. We know better now.
I would LOVE it for men to evaluate the risks and benefits of marriage against their personal values, but few men actually do.
===
“Others value marriage more than you do.”
No they don’t because we don’t have the same view of what marriage is actually going to be like. If they saw more accurately how their marriage is likely to turn out, then they wouldn’t value it any more than I do.
“Others see factors in their lives that mitigate the risk or which make the potential harm less significant.”
And they are typically wrong about those mitigating factors.
“Others may give lesser value to future risks than you do.”
This is valid. People vary in risk-aversion. But it is interesting to note that I am a risk taker by nature. For example, I have given up years of income to start a business (which ultimately failed).
BTW I really appreciate this exchange as it’s helping clarify my own thoughts.
(I misthreaded this. Sorry.)
“But in practice men typically do NOT asses the risks and benefits accurately.”
Were you correct in that claim, your proper course of action would be to make available evidence supporting your beliefs, instead of giving advice which, because men don’t have that evidence, they will be perfectly correct in disregarding. You may persuade some men with that evidence; you will do nothing (except maybe piss them off) by giving advice.
Well I did post an article earlier. I also made a “mini-case” against marriage for men. But both of those things are besides the point. This isn’t the place to write a detailed cased against marriage.
The evidence is all around us and all over the internet. The issue at this point is not the lack of evidence, but lack of motivation on the part of men to seek it out and examine it for themselves. My comments are aimed to provide such motivation.
If it pissed a few men off, great. I hope this will lead them to examine this question for themselves, if only to prove me wrong (in their mind). Google is your friend, but if one needs help getting started, then here:
http://dontmarry.wordpress.com/
I see that my forbearance has been for naught.
G, you just keep digging yourself in deeper. So, I’m going to be blunt. Nobody is going to take your patronizing pronouncements seriously. Once you figure out why you are being patronizing, you may have a chance of effectively presenting your views. However, should you reach that level of maturity, you will also see that your views are wrong.
I’m done with this thread.
twwells – I love the irony of your last response.
G,
I’m certainly not going to be put into a position of defending marriage. I have already stated my position on state involvement in marriage. And no, I don’t play Russian roulette — real or figurative. What I will say is that everyone makes their own choices and finds their own up- and downsides in things, and that is their prerogative.
I do advocate that people educate themselves about the risks of their choices and take steps to minimize them. But there is no such thing as a life without risk, no matter whether our choice is as mundane as getting out of bed in the morning or crossing the street, or as life-changing as entering a relationship, marrying, or having children. To think otherwise is self-delusion.
To deny oneself the pleasures of life as one might individually define or prefer them is self-denying and self-defeating, and one has no need of the state to achieve that end.
Okie Dokie.
Well. I’m stupid. I have three children by the same woman, all in marriage. My first is on a full scholarship for Applied Mathematics in an Honors course at University requiring a thesis for a Bachelors (the kid does algebra, trig, and calc in his head, I’ve had to push him to fit in by putting work on paper); my second is headed the same way, a TA an 4.0 in HS; and my third, the smartest of the three is like a boat without a rudder.
Twenty years now of marriage.
My wife and I knew each other for 6 years before marriage, both of us married to others, and frankly we could barely tolerate each other (we shared one central family through marriage of others). When both of us were divorced we by odd chance went on a date. We married 7 months later and there wasn’t a doubt after the first month of dating other than “should I ask, will he ask”. Put the central family into such delicious chaos.
Now, did my wife at one point give me the “alimony and child support speech”, sure, we were having a really rough patch and she had a friend that had soaked her husband to the extreme (if you went by any measure of division of labor, or even respect for your spouse, the woman deserved shit). I explained very carefully that 2 of our three children were old enough to sway the court as to custody and that I would fight for my children until there was no money left. Rough patch went away, our only one.
We lost a child in utero; our oldest came very close to dying at 15 months (6 days in the hospital, touch and go) and then went through a horrific surgery at 13 (scar starts at the base of his neck and ends at his buttocks) and diagnosed Type 1 at 14; I’ve come close (a staph infection that required a line into my heart); she’s come close too many times; and we’ve gone through a familial molestation of one daughter (I’ve have nothing to do with one side of my family and my wife has written permission even direction from me not to contact them should I die, fuck them and may they burn in hell). These bad times as well the good are binding times.
Whether soulmate or not, men and women can make a solid marriage. I will not cheat on my wife and I trust my wife not to either. (BTW my second wife has a real high libido, so sweet, and is adventuresome. If she weren’t chronically ill I’d smile so much more….)
As for the existence of soulmates, just to put your declaration of no possibility to rest, I knew one couple really well. I was raised by them. They were my grandparents. You’re simply wrong by lack of experience or cynicism.
I saw it for 12 and a half years until she died at 52 when I was 15 and a half, and it was sugar, salt, and pepper. They had their tragedy, losing their only son together in 1962 when he was 18, but they weathered it for each other and me. They worked together 12 to 16 hours a day for almost all those years, and it was sugar, salt, and pepper. Everyday.
You are not stupid. You are lucky.
You do state that you got the alimony/child support speech and apparently what kept her from proceeding was that you convinced her she would lose in court.
You grandparents lived and married in a totally different time. Read this “letter to a future daughter-in-law, possibly my own” from a happily married woman:
http://shiningpearlsofsomething.blogspot.com/2012/09/anonymous-letter.html
It is interesting to note that the younger the men the less they think of marriage? Why do you that is?
Actually, G, it wasn’t the times. My grandparents met in the late 1930’s, both married, dumped both partners, drank like fish and gambled like idiots. With all those faults, they were nothing but attentive to me and pushed me to college (neither made it past middle school), and nothing but set on staying together if one or the other survived the last fight. Soulmates doesn’t mean some sort of Brahma moment, or New Age peace, my grandparents were scrappers. It’s how they expressed it, German to Italian when ethnicity had meaning between Europeans. Having written that, I guess I do have to give you “the times”. It’s just that my grandparents weren’t typical by today’s fantasies.
Now, as for my wife and that period, she has a friend who was egging her on at the time, I hated her and she me. She didn’t live up to equal in marriage but was bitter that her husband dumped her (both lawyers, he worked way, way more hours than she but that was a slight to her even when she spent the money his additional time earned, and she would not put a second into the home unless he did). The talk was easy, numbers are easy, but it did give me the thought that women mature earlier but not farther, or even as far. There are some sociological studies that give that possibility. I’ll do the usual disclaimer for feminists, cops, or any other group that can’t understand: it doesn’t mean you, it means your group has this greater tendency.
As for younger men: 1) if the milk is free why buy the cow (I do so realize to women that’s not a nice phrase, but maybe you women should look at the other half and realize your emotions aren’t the laws of the Universe, however much you believe they should be, we actually have emotions different than yours, however inarticulate unless you piss us off, yet still valid because they are ours as yours are yours but without your self-righteous preening, where your needs are the world’s natural state, but a mans abnormal yet we number your number. You are so ignorant of the world beyond your arms and your legs where you give no more to a man than he to you; 2) too many women are proclaiming the virtue of single motherhood while still expecting the father to pay even if he is to be excluded from the child’s life by yoy because it’s too painful for you the mother (this goes back to maturity, neither sex would do that if not arrested in maturity, and if women would own up to being adults not so arrested); and 3) the family courts are like a response to the 19th Century, an argument where men got the court’s approval too often then so women should now, yet neither lived in that century. You can’t make up wrongs done generations ago, or even the last, by doing wrong today. It is the worst of thinking, and not supportable without the worst of ideology, an ideology that punishes the children for the sins of the mothers. It’s despicable, I should be whipped, made to suffer for my mother’s sins? (I know, you thought “father’s”, so “mother’s” was jarring, because all our mother’s are sainted, even when they kill ouir children more often than the we, but our children need to be protected from their fathers, because women are saints and men scoundrels. Please, do this entire paragraph to an Irish lilt. You’ll better understand it and maybe, just maybe, it will break your prejudices, or it’ll will just sound pretty and you can go back to your ignorant lives. In the meantime, I’ll read Finnegan’s Wake with some hope to understand the Gaelic ( any tutors?).
In one time of troubles, my wife said I should leave, and I said back, I owned this house before I met you, you should be an adult and leave if you want somebody to leave. We stayed.
“As for younger men: 1) if the milk is free why buy the cow”
Not quite free, just not overpriced.
Whether men want children or not is their concern; but they should never allow the state to dictate one way or the other. If a man does not have children purely due to the legal threat of losing them, they he has already “lost” the children he otherwise would have had.
Russia allows a type of commercial surrogacy where it is possible for a man to have his name on the birth certificate as the only parent. This might not provide total security, but it does lower the risks considerably.
“Soulmate” is kind of pansy word to me – so I don’t use it. However, I do think there is something to “binding” to a particular woman. For me, it took a couple of decades but I’m definitely “bound” to her emotionally to the point that I can’t comprehend life without her.
It’s the natural order of things, I think. No one wants to live alone in their old age. You say “stay single” but what’s the value of being a single retired man in the last years of his life without someone to share that time with?
As far as this belief that the deck is stacked in favor of women when it comes to divorce – this is overblown. I have a good friend who was a perfect mother and also the provider for her family and she lost custody of her kids AND had to pay alimony to her ex after the divorce. The judge, a SOUTHERN judge, just took her kids from her on the grounds that, in his “professional” opinion – her career was too demanding for her to be a good mother to them. Never mind the fact that she had a proven track record of excellent motherhood to those kids and had already arranged her career to spend even more time with her kids as a single, divorced Mom.
In my honest opinion – if you want to break this down into a “war” between the sexes then I think it’s MEN who are more at fault. Men have abdicated their responsibility for parenthood and this has resulted in tens, hundreds of millions of our kids being raised by single mothers – which is not the optimum by any means when compared to two parent households where the parents are both ENGAGED in the process of rearing the kids.
What’s amazing – is that all these kids being raised in this manner will become the taxpayers who will bear the burden of caring for all those old, single men.
Because the welfare state shuns holding anyone responsible for anything – it’s breeding it’s own downfall, because you aren’t going hold these kids responsible for supporting the welfare state. They won’t have it. They know how to play the game and they’ll play it.
Krulac,
The connotations of words: soulmates is pansy and yet “binding” or “bound” isn’t. Chick flicks and guy flicks: the girl gets the guy in the former and the guy gets the girl in the latter. The only difference is in the expression of the getting.
krulac,
You might want to look at the Fathers & Families blog. Men are just slightly more likely than women to give up their children. Women do a lot of gate-keeping that purposely excludes fathers, especially when women look at their children as extensions and sole property.
Your example is a real outlier: women get custody of children roughly 83% of the time, and no that doesn’t mean that the better parent got the child. Women also ignore court ordered visitation with impunity, as family courts will swiftly punish a miss on child support but will ignore “she’s kept me from my children for 6 months”. Really, do some reading on how family courts work, how paternity is determined or abrogated, and how charges of abuse and sex abuse work in divorce. As well how custody, visitation, and child support really work. Statistically, not “I’ve got this friend…”. Anecdotes are data, but it takes a lot of them and they have to be verified.
And, BTW, I got this from law blogs and government sources. F&F just helps for perspective. Last time I looked, a child is more likely to be abused or killed by the mother than the father by a factor of 1.76. If you feel the need to start making excuses for the women, you’re just infantilizing them. Unless of course you also feel the need to make excuses for the men that do it. Do you?
Ariel,
You obviously see the situation for what is. What’s amazing to me is that you still chose to marry (did you know all this going in?). I think this speaks to just how much men are willing to sacrifice for women.
But there is a limit and we have reached this limit. Expect more and more men to take a stance on marriage similar to mine. And expect marriage rates to continue declining. We will not be shamed into marriage, we will not be bullied into marriage. You cannot appeal to our sense of duty because we have none. We lost our sense of duty when women abdicated all responsibility.
We are a minority, but a growing minority. We sound like whiners to the majority, but we don’t care. We don’t care about a society that doesn’t care about us.
Ariel,
You really covered the reality very well, and I agree that krulac’s anecdotal example really is an outlier.
One factoid that I would add to your excellent account is that, in those rare cases when child support is ordered to the woman and custody to the man, women only pay that support in 57% of cases, versus 68% for men. And that is a long-term reality. But deadbeat moms are something we rarely hear about. Here is just one story on the issue:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,59963,00.html
There is little question that historically courts were unfair to women, but for well over three decades now that unfairness has shifted to men. This has become a political, more than a judicial, issue, as more and more judges succumb to strident feminism. But many people remain woefully uninformed about how things have changed and still assume that men have the upper hand in divorce, a myth purposely perpetrated by political feminists and their media allies.
The really troubling thing about all this is that “family court” is an oxymoron, and the greatest victims of the gross distortion of both justice and compassion imposed by these courts are the family itself and their most defenseless constituents, the children who ultimately are hurt as part of the horrendous collateral damage. This is a major issue with numerous serious societal ramifications that gets little attention and virtually non-existent attempts at reform.
I think this is just one more element that coincides with the basic premise of this blog and further illustrates the dishonesty, injustice, incompetence, and harm inflicted on us by government and agenda-driven, self-styled do-gooders and moralists.
Man and women both have built-in biological bias in favor of women. If you consider the situation objectively, you may come away with a different conclusions. The majority of men who “abdicated their responsibility for parenthood” were FORCED out of their homes and had their children TAKEN from them by the women via the power of the state.
Please do read the “letter to a future daughter-in-law, possibly my own” I posted above.
Just a comment on men having to take the risk. I came across this article and really love this quote:
‘Imagine what sort of condition Firestone Tires would be in today if, instead of addressing their quality problem, they had gotten huffy and said “Well, NOT ALL our tires are ‘like that.’ Not every one will fail on you and kill you and/or your family. YOU just HAVE TO find the ones that won’t.”’
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2010/10/24/beyond-the-marriage-strike-entering-the-era-of-post-marriage-consciousness/
In response to the woman asking the first question, first I would say that, no, it is not a strange thing to think about nor a subject that should be avoided. The problem I have with your question and the attitude expressed by most people is with the word “cheat.”
If you and your spouse are upfront and honest with one another and don’t go sneaking around on the side, it is not cheating. It is when people do things on the sly and hide their true actions and feelings, or break agreements made with the other partner, that it becomes cheating. If you and your husband make agreements, even if they accommodate sexual liaisons outside your marriage or relationship, and stick to them — and are open about them — how can that be considered cheating?
Does it take a realignment of attitudes in many cases? Yes, of course. But one that is well worth the effort. Honesty and openness are empowering, whereas deceit takes the power out of a relationship and out of us as individuals. Ultimately it destroys both the relationship as well as the integrity of the parties.
This is a lesson I had to learn the hard way, over many years and several hidden (and not so well hidden) liaisons on both sides. But it is one I don’t believe I will ever relent on again. If I cannot have this kind of openness and honesty in a relationship, then it is not the right relationship for me.
Admittedly this is a much harder policy to adapt if one is already in a relationship and far down the road of acquired and imposed habits and expectations and ways of relating. Implementing at that point, one has to be prepared for it to end the relationship if the other party cannot make the adjustment or accept the truth. That is not to say that it should not be done, but one needs to be aware of and accepting of the possible consequences.
So dealing with this subject and reaching those agreements before entering into a marriage or other serious relationship is the correct time to do it. If the parties’ attitudes and beliefs and desires and ability to accommodate those of the other party don’t coincide on such important matters as this, only trouble can lie ahead, and one might as well find that out sooner rather than later.
You missed the point. The guy’s in love with his whore and wants to know if it is possible for her to reciprocate, but he didn’t want to come right out and say it, and risk looking like a fool.
His question was a lot longer; I trimmed it to fit. Though what you say is certainly possible, it wasn’t the sense his whole letter gave me.
My ex and I had a discussion about whether our marriage should be open. She wanted the freedom to have other sexual partners and I wasn’t possessive, so we agreed to have an open marriage, with the rule that we tell before doing. Unfortunately, that wasn’t good enough for her; six years into the marriage, she told me that she had had five affairs that she hadn’t told me about.
As a general rule, I think such discussions are a good thing. They didn’t help in my marriage but that was because my ex wasn’t able to keep her word.
As for men and sexual variety….I’ve never felt the urge. Even in my open marriage, I didn’t go looking for other sexual partners until after my ex’s confession, and that was for comfort, not variety.
I face a risk of marriage that I seldom hear or see mention of: the loss of my income, not because Laura transforms into some monstrous bitch and takes it in divorce court, but simply for being married at all. It’s a condition of my disability payments. My fault, I guess, for not falling in love with a millionaire (and somehow persuading her to fall in love with me).
Maggie, doesn’t it seem that, at least in the developed countries, most people have their own cake? Marriage has changed a lot over the last few centuries: people choose their own mates, women have a voice in the decision and in the resulting marriage and some power to go with it,* and it might reasonably be said that love has conquered marriage.
IOW, perhaps it is all about the icing, because many couples consist of two people who don’t need any cake from each other; they have their own cake. All another person has to bring is icing.
* Whether or not women have [scary voice] TOO MUCH POWER,[/scary voice] or if men have too little is something I’m not going to get into, but I will state as my official position that neither men nor women should have all the power, or none of the power.
But is just the icing sufficient to hold two disparate pieces of cake together over the long term?
Precisely. Romantic love simply isn’t enough without either economic interdependence or a degree of friendship and social attachment which most modern people are incapable of reaching (largely because they’re chasing after the phantom of unending romantic love).
What you are describing is what polyamory folks call “new relationship energy,” or NRE. It gives you sweaty palms, causes your heart to flutter, and can be one reason for “cheating.” But there is an old relationship energy, too. It isn’t as sparkly as NRE, but ORE has a quieter, and yet more solid value of its own. This is the friendship you speak of, and more modern people are capable of it than the constant blaring of bad news would have you think.
Old married folks can be very much in love, even if the palms don’t sweat as often.
Why am I telling you this? You know this.
Of course I know it, but it isn’t the point. Polyamory folks have taken the time to think about this; most haven’t, and assume not only that they’re no longer “in love”, but that it’s the other person’s fault in a real and legally actionable sense. It’s long past time to get the government’s hands OUT of human sexual relationships, totally and permanently.
@Maggie: ” It’s long past time to get the government’s hands OUT of human sexual relationships, totally and permanently.”
Here, here!
But we are still in the Dark Ages as far as this goes (and the inky shadows seem to be thickening all the time . . . )
So you’re saying that too many people these days regard the loss of NRE as the loss of love itself, and thus dump the marriage because they can’t recognize that old love is also good love? Undoubtedly many do, while some others dump a marriage which should never have been, and which was only tolerable because of the shiny NRE.
But then this has been happening ever since marriage became more about choosing your own mate than uniting the two biggest flour milling families in the region. There were plenty of cries in the 1920s that marriage was doomed.
Your last sentence I can endorse with a clear conscious, and cheerfully so.
It better be. Again, you often don’t need anybody else to provide cake, because you’ve got your own. You also don’t need marriage to cement a treaty, or join two family businesses into something big enough to quash the competition.
Marriage ain’t what it used to be, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
Methinks you need to reread my “Modern Marriage” essay. I didn’t say it was bad, but it is very different. The problem is that the culture (and more importantly, the law) does not treat it as such; it pretends the equivalents of traditional affairs (chemical-based and temporary) are the same as the real economic union called “marriage”, which they aren’t. And the result is human misery, screwed-up kids and lawyers and the state fattening themselves on pain.
I’ve been thinking of that essay long after I read it. We may not agree on everything, but I do agree with you that the law lags the changes of the modern world. It does this in a lot of areas, and marriage is one of them.
A point that seems to be ignored is that monogamy isn’t the only kind of marriage that we have, shall we say, instinctive leanings towards? Our poly friends can probably tell us more about -andry and -gyny permanent relationships, which seem to be forgotten about when permanent relations are considered.
Both these forms can and do evolve from monogamy, and illustrate a middle ground between monogamy and promiscuity that satisfies the sexual, social and partnering instincts and desires of more than two people in a lasting way.
I think it was our instinctive responses, both as individuals and genders, that gave rise to tribalism; it was an artefact of emergent behaviour, not a concious societal imposition, that was mutually satisfying and not subject to the strife of self vs other we now seem to have to deal with.
More and more often, I’m seeing people with huge conflicts of self vs other, and the dissonance between who they really are, and what society says is ok, is growing ever greater.
The Moral proseletysation going on is *actively harming people*.
“and I feel such intense affection for her that I equally look forward to our conversations after my basic physical need has been satisfied.”
Sigh. And in how many of these conversations is this punter listening to her ramble on about stuff he has no interest in? Because that’s what people normally do. When you are paying a sex worker, you are dealing with someone on their very, very best behaviour, who is making a special effort to flatter you and make you comfortable.
Back when I used to see hookers, to protect myself I made and kept a simple rule – never see the same girl twice in a row. It’s a practise this poor man could benefit from.