I will agree that any relationship, especially marriage requires commitment and means give and take.

In a successful relationship you should not think of it as being a 50:50 split, a 60:40 or anything else. Are you willing to give 100 or all you can give to keep the relationship going? Until you are willing to say yes, perhaps you should stay single.

This comment is not because I think a marriage should be 100% sacrifice, but more because mine, theirs, or he vs. she is a defeatist way to look at a relationship.

If your wife nags you, this sounds like an opportunity for both of you to learn more about communication. From personal experience, I didn’t like being that nagging woman. Because of my frustration around the whole situation and not knowing how to make things work I’ve read a number of relationship and communication books to try and help things. According to my current SO I do a decent job.

About the whole men get a bum rap in divorce, maybe. I’ve certainly heard of men who do not get custody. However, I’ve also heard about or know men who get 50% custody and if they pay anything it is child support due to differences in income between the partners, not alimony, not child support because you are not around, etc.

About the money part of divorce, I am divorced and I freely admit I made a bad choice. It was a rebound relationship and I stuck with him because he was nice to me, until eventually he wasn’t. I won’t go into the what happened, but suffice to say I was in the stereotypical male position of being the breadwinner. In the divorce he got half of all of our assets despite not working for 1.5 years of the 4 year marriage, half of my ore-marital Roth 401k, and asked for alimony. The only reason he didn’t get alimony is because the marriage was short. The judge applied the rules the same to my case as she would have in reverse.

The reason the divorce rate is so high is because people CAN leave. With feminism, women can get paid a decent wage for their labor and do a wide variety of jobs instead of just be a secretary. This means there are probably less people trapped in marriages they don’t want to be in, and those that last are probably happier. On the other side, if you don’t want as much divorce stripping one gender of their rights and ability to work is a great way to keep them chained to someone else in a marriage.

Despite this I think marriage is a great thing. If two people love each other they should be able to be together. And I’m sure that there are benefits of marriage instead of just co-habitation. Perhaps if you had a large enough sampling of truly committed individuals who chose not to get married you would see the benefits of marriage go away. However, you have a partner, a friend, and someone to use as support in good times and bad in marriage. If you are just together, the other person can leave.

The risks of loss for the men, in terms of health, finances, the children, the assets, etc. are FAR greater than the alleged benefits. And given the outrageous divorce rate and the fact that women initiate over 70% of all divorces – the ability for any man to achieve all of that greatness you report over a long period of time (a lifetime) is so infinitesimally small as to have odds worse than being struck by lightning.

While I believe that there are great women out there (because I believe I have finally found one), the sense of entitlement, empowerment, and the ability to pull the plug and TAKE TAKE TAKE TAKE with the force of government aiding and abetting them along the way, you would have to be out of your frigging mind or a huge “risk taking personality” to get married until society and the laws in divorce and family court change significantly.

http://www.thepsychoexwife.com/about-the-psycho-ex-wife/

Marriage does not guarantee any of these benefits. However, it does guarantee that if things don’t work out, you will foot the bill.

For the minority of people with good marriages, congratulations.

I think many of the comments here point out the danger of simply taking your own experiences and projecting them onto every other person.

I was married at the age of 20 and my wife was 22. Nearly 21 years later we are still together and I would say that marriage has been (and still is) a very good thing for us. We have 3 beautiful children, the eldest being 15 and on the verge of forging her own life. We have provided a consistent environment for our children to grow up in, and I am proud of that. I have a best friend who has stuck with me through the ups and downs of life and knows me better than anyone else.

Two specific points I would like to make in support of marriage:

1. Children: If you can manage it I think there is no better environment to raise a child in than a stable marriage. This could also apply to other relationships, but I believe these are more likely to fail than marriages. People that divorce and think that it will not affect their children are fooling themselves.

2. What is the alternative? People are social, and need relationships at lots of different levels to be healthy and happy. Are we really saying that modern society has made us so selfish that we cannot establish a great relationship with one other person. What hope for society if this is true?

I am not saying that stumbling into any old marriage is a recipe for happiness, but seeking out a successful marriage should be high on any man’s list of priorities.