I think basing a marriage on child rearing is a path to failure, too. At least for anyone intelligent and independent. It relegates women to cattle, to a degree, if its the sole purpose for them being there. I really think Frank Zappa had it right in that you need to find your matching level of crazy. I don't want a slave or a mom, so I married a woman who is pretty fucking smart and neither of those things. Any shot at the foundational nuclear family life got shit on with the last two feminism waves, unfortunately. That's one pillar of western civilization that we are never getting back at this point and why the durkas keep their women wrapped up in glad garbage bags. I am glad I found a partner, but I am really fucking lucky. The odds are so far against it, especially at the age we married, for at least one party to not be completely fucked up on some level. And my view is not some new view, my entire family going back generations (4 removed from Germany at this point) always had this different but equal view on men, women, and marriage. Its just that the courts are keeping the legacy pre-suffrage standards in place for what really is a different playing field thanks to recent feminism pushes.
I agree with you, and I don't really have a good answer for that. I can tell you right now if I had any inkling 8-9 years ago when we were talking about having my youngest that I never would have agreed to have another kid if I
in any way thought we would be divorced right now. My oldest turns 18 this year and then she'll be free to carve her own path, but the little one really, really pisses me off. I thought we had an agreement - we were going to work together to raise these kids, work on the 'business' of owning this house and setting ourselves up for retirement. She broke it at her first available convenience and for the life of me I have no idea why.
And for what? Are men any happier, even the pussy slaying eternally single guys who get to be major stops on the cock caraselle for these supposedly empowered new women?
The only reason I would say I'm "happier" now is simply because I don't have to deal with emotional blackmail or terrorism. I'm not a bad looking dude, 6'3", 210, I'm in fair to good shape (job keeps me there), and I've got the biker/viking/metal look going on, so I do just fine with the women. But it's not any more fulfilling rotating thru half a dozen women, no. It's a nicer life only because as soon as they give me any bullshit they can hit the road, but it's just shallow crap. Life is definitely better with a partner who shares your goals and dreams for the future, absolutely no doubt about it. The problem is that people's goals change all the time. Mine said she shared all my goals, but she did everything she could to sabotage them all at every juncture. I was making less money than her, but now that I stepped up and started working OT to make this work as one instead of 2, I realize the numbers don't jive. I know how much she made every year, and I know how much I make now, and I strongly suspect she's been diverting money to another checking account for several years. When you stop getting paystubs and everything goes online, you have no way of knowing where shit goes. She didn't declare it on the divorce, but there's absolutely no way she made 93k a year and was taking home less money than I am now making 70. None. Where did it go? Who knows. It's probably gone, pissed away on Starbucks and lottery tickets.
She's been saying for the entire life of my oldest that she wants to take the girls to Disneyworld Okay, how do you propose we come up with the 10k to do that? Because you spend everything every week. I mean seriously, we were making 140k a year and living paycheck to paycheck. Her response was always "Well, I shouldn't have to sacrifice anything for that." Uhh, what the fuck, do you think money is limitless? We have X. You want to spend X+10, where do we get the other 10? Maybe spend less elsewhere? Nope, never crossed her fucking mind, and she was offended I even suggested it.
And none of that mattered anyway, because she could never stockpile enough vacation time to actually go anyway. I get 4.5 weeks a year and can start doing stuff and going places, but she got 6 hours of vac and 6 hours of sick every pay period and her total was perpetually at 6...because as soon as she had something to spend, she would go in late Monday. So then when I start planning what to do with my vacation time it was "Well, you're not going anywhere without me." Well, what the fuck do you want me to do? You chose what to do with your PTO all year long, and it wasn't whatever I was doing.
We sure as fuck know the women aren't, even when they are milking the fuck out of the double standard like Noodle's wife does. And the ones who try to make marriage work under these new rules are at least as miserable as the forever alone crowd, because someone always has some unrealistic goal. In the case of the man, they wanted a bang maid like their dad may have had or what they were sold before the ring went on and the claws went in. And I always say, look at the mother and that's what you are getting once you tie the knot. That has almost never been wrong, in my experience. In the case of the woman, she wants the "woman power" have a career hire a Mexican nanny bullshit she was fed as a kid (i.e. childish expectations) while being taken care of for the rest of her life once she cranks out some hell spawn. And once these dysfunctional couples DO manage to crank out a couple of fuck trophies, their own fucked up bitter relationship spirals impact these kids and make sure the cycle repeats itself.
See, I thought I had that, and somewhere along the way it changed. I loved my wife because she used to call me out on my bullshit. I had a pretty abusive childhood, and every time I look in the mirror when I don't have a beard, I just see my father. I don't want to be that way, and didn't want to marry my mother (who just tolerated it all), so I married a woman who wasn't afraid to tell me "Yeah, you're being a dick right now, stop that." That's fucking great, you're only as good as the people you surround yourself with.
But, somewhere in the last decade or so, all that stopped and she started seeing me as an authority figure. She would lie to me when I caught her doing stupid shit. She would avoid responsibility for stuff she was doing, and she would do all that stupid teenager shit like sneaking out and staying out late and basically doing the whole "Fuck you dad, I'm gonna smoke if I want to" shit. It was absolutely baffling. The best I can come up with is that I grew up and she didn't. She's just perpetually stuck in this little kid subroutine of "I want a lollipop now." "No, you'll ruin your dinner." "Well, then I'm gonna steal one."
She also understands men and women are different. As long as I show her the respect she is due, learned from my upbringing, she returns it back to me in kind. That is how it SHOULD work in western society. Instead, the Boomers and the current child worshiping crowd have managed to create a whole generation of entitled princesses and dick swinging assholes, both of whom either bail at the first sign of trouble or slowly bitterly destroy each other over time. I am not saying we go back to the 50s, but there HAS to be a happy medium for you 30-40 year olds that lies between the current lack of structure and the barbaric durka durka shit the religious types are pushing their idiot crowd back to.
I'm still holding out hope that I can find someone like that. Thankfully, dudes in their late 30's-early 40's have a lot going for them. We're pretty much at our prime in terms of sexual desirability, so it's not all doom and gloom. I'll meet a lot of women in the next few years, and I'm assuming more than a few of them will have the same story I have, because there's just as many manchilds as there are female brats. And I am happy for the people who genuinely have something and are making it work. All I have to say is that not that long ago, I would have said my wife was the most devoted woman I could have ever possibly hoped for, and she would follow me to hell and back, and how lucky I am to have her. It's only within the new reality of the distance I have now to that marriage and being able to step back that I can honestly say "Damn, she really did manipulate the shit out of me, and really well at that. She was never my partner, she just spent a lot of time making me think she was." She gaslit the shit out of me, she made me question myself and my own sanity at times. She made me feel like I was the crazy one for not trusting her, when the reality is she was abusing every single aspect of our relationship so she could do whatever she wanted, and when I started questioning her, she claimed I was abusive and moved on to the next guy.
Guys like Noodle are just allowing themselves to be fooled. I know because I was one. We do it because want that partnership we saw our fathers and grandfathers have, and it just doesn't exist anymore, at least not the way it did.
Good post, Phaz, you're spot on.
