This is the MRP draft. The full draft is reserved for my eventual book, which would address the more biblical aspects of this concept, which I expect will no doubt come up in the comments anyway.

I've written several posts and comments about divorce around here. It's literally my day job, so why not? But I think some people get the wrong idea about why I wrote many of those posts and comments in the first place. In most things I do, there's usually a bigger game that I'm working toward than the immediate context would let on. If you can take some general divorce wisdom out of those posts, great, but that's not why they're there.

Someone once asked in one of those posts: "Why are you posting this here? Doesn't this belong on r/divorce?" Here's the reason: I want men to position themselves in such a way that they are not manipulated in their marriages by the fear of divorce. It's not about helping guys through divorce; it's about helping guys stop being afraid of divorce so they can live in their own frame.

"The Marriage" Doesn't Exist

I'm currently writing a book for r/RPChristians. There's scant little RP content for Christians, so I figure I'll contribute. Whatever. I was writing a section by the same name of this post and believe this is a broader issue than my own little niche of the manosphere.

"The marriage" doesn't exist. "The relationship" doesn't exist. There's you and her. That's it.

I was talking to someone about Negative Inquiry recently. His wife told him, "You never talk with me!" The NI response: "What's wrong with not talking with you?" Her answer: Because that's what married people are supposed to do. Do you see it?

Maybe not. Let's give a series of examples:

  • "Marriage is about love"

  • "Communication is the life blood of marriage"

  • "Married people are supposed to ..."

  • "I can't do ... because I'm married."

  • "Marriage is hard work."

  • "My marriage is wonderful/sucks."

See how these phrases personify "marriage" (or for singles: "the relationship") as its own entity? All of these examples aren't pointing to yourself or the other person as the one whose judgment you're trying to satisfy. So, when your wife says, "That's what married people are supposed to do," she really means, "That's what I want you to do" - but she's invoking "the marriage" as some higher authority than herself. Why? Because if she stopped her hamster for a second and recognized that she's only communicating her own personal preference, then that only puts her on an equal footing with you - her preference against yours, and that's not a good way to win an argument. No, she must invoke a higher authority - in this case, one that doesn't actually exist. But as long as she can keep you thinking it does, she can control you. She creates this third metaphysical concept, labels it "the marriage" and then says that you have to keep this non-existent entity happy or else ... and then the "or else" line is never finished in your subconscious, though we can always assume divorce is somewhere in the list. Does divorce scare you? More on that later.

Removing "The Marriage" From Your Frame

When a guy says the phrases above, it communicates to me that he isn't in his own frame. He is in the frame of "the marriage." That's weird, because "the marriage" never spoke to me to tell me what it expected. It didn't write a book or post online. It doesn't put feelings in your heart to guide you. "The marriage" doesn't exist at all. Anything I learned about "marriage" is really from culture or other people. And if I let their definitions of "marriage" control what I think my "marriage" should look like, guess whose frame I'm living in!

In reality, any comments about "marriage" as its own entity can be boiled down to a series of "If ... then ..." clauses. Ignoring the merits of the phrases themselves, let's go back to each of the above and see what they're really trying to communicate.

  • "Marriage is about love." What they're really saying is, "IF they want to remain together, THEN two people in a committed relationship should orient their lives around loving each other" ... and most likely there are a host of expectations on what it looks like to "love" someone. But why this particular IF/THEN in the first place? What if I want my marriage to be oriented around something else, like accomplishing my mission in life? Who's going to stop me? Who in this world is going to say I'm wrong for having a different purpose for my marriage than the next guy?

  • "Communication is the life blood of marriage." In other words, "IF you want to enjoy being in a committed relationship, THEN you need to know how to communicate effectively." See how different this sounds? It's not, "I'm married, so I'd better learn how to communicate." It's, "IF I want a result, THEN I must do something to get that result." This re-wording also opens the door for challenging the concept in the first place: "Now that I think about it, is communication really what produces the result I'm looking for in the first place, or is it something else?" That's how your eyes start opening.

  • "Married people are supposed to ..." I.e. "You have a moral obligation to act a certain way with and toward your spouse." Says who? This could also be re-written: "IF you don't do certain things, THEN you are not good at being a married person." If we take out the concept of "the marriage" and accept that we're just two people who have chosen to live around one another, then this really should read, "IF you want to get the benefits of the committed relationship, THEN certain behaviors are a good idea." That makes more sense, but isn't at all what the original phrase implies.

  • "I can't do ... because I'm married." What they're thinking is, "IF I do ... THEN I will have a bad marriage." A bad marriage to who? Your neighbor? What they're really saying is, "People will think I have a bad marriage if I do ..." Now the frame issue becomes clearer.

  • "Marriage is hard work" turns into "IF you want someone else to stay committed to you - and especially IF you want to enjoy their being committed to you - THEN you'll have to work hard."

  • "My marriage is wonderful/sucks" ... isn't behaviorally oriented, so there's no IF/THEN clause, but to show a more descriptive statement, this becomes "I really enjoy/hate the fact that I'm committed to being around her and that she's committed to being around me."

I could elaborate more, but I assume you get the idea. There's you. There's her. There's ... nope, that's it. As soon as I bring "society" or "other people" or "the marriage" as a judge over how I should behave, it's no longer "my marriage" anyway.

I'm Still Single

If "the marriage" doesn't exist and is really a colloquial short hand for "in a committed relationship with legal enforcement," then things should change about how you perceive your obligations in the relationship. WISNIFG's Bill of Rights No. 4 says, "You have the right to change your mind." Okay, so the "committed relationship" part is moot, if we embrace this fully. Suddenly the "legal enforcement" part starts to matter. u/weakandsensitive once explained his position on MRP v. TRP, saying, "I'm not pro-marriage; I'm anti-divorce rape," which opens the door for a unique discussion from what you'd see on TRP. If you can rightly escape the frame of "the marriage" and can minimize the impact of the legal enforcement of your commitment, then what's holding you back anymore from getting what you want out of life?

At that point, you can function independently as your own man. You can set your own goals and achieve them. For the Christians out there, this is why I believe Paul says in 1 Cor. 7, "Those with wives should live as though they had none" (though this requires more explanation, which I'll reserve for the book).

And here's the thing: I've found over and over and over again that women aren't attracted to "husbands" - at least not as that concept is generally understood in society today. Just as "the marriage" doesn't exist, the concept of being a "husband" doesn't either. That's a metaphysical concept or label that people throw around to impute a social stigma on how you should feel or behave. It's usually associated with, "A good husband is/does/should ..." By attaching a moral judgment on such phrases as "a good marriage" or "a good husband," there's an implicit imperative for you to live by the standard that follows or else you're "not good" - or worse: you're "bad." In reality, you're just not living up to someone else's preferences. To that end, if their standard of a "good/bad" husband/marriage/relationship doesn't produce the results that you want, then why not be a "bad husband" or have a "bad marriage" by the meta definition in order to accomplish your own goals? And ... ::GASP:: ... what if the other person in the relationship finds they actually like it more that way too?!?

Let me be abundantly clear: I'm NOT saying to act like you're single. I AM saying that if you remove the concept of "the marriage" or "the relationship" from your frame, you are single. When you said, "I do," there wasn't some new entity that was born or created called "the marriage," which you must forever try to appease. You're still you. [This is more nuanced for the Christians crowd, but I'll spare that conversation here, other than to say that instead of creating a new thing, when she enters your frame, she becomes part of you - not you becoming something different alongside her; just as we become part of Christ and Christ doesn't change to become something new when he married the Church.]

... Just Married

You're a single guy who entered into a contract that has three primary clauses (at least in my state):

  • Loyalty - That you are aligning your interests such that what will be good for one will be good for the other and you will not unreasonably try to harm the interests of the other.

  • Support - That you have something to contribute and will utilize that contribution in a way that works in tandem with the contributions of the other (ex. one contributes money-earning skills, the other contributes home-making skills).

  • Fidelity - That you will not have sex with anyone else outside the marriage.

My state's "grounds for divorce" predominantly stem from different ways of violating one of these three contractual clauses. Although these are the operative "obligations" defined in my state's statutes, people don't get married because they want to subject themselves to these obligations. There's another IF/THEN concept at play, which is at least two-fold:

  • "If you keep screwing me and doing other stuff I want you to do, then I will remain loyal, supportive, and faithful to you."

  • Because of no-fault divorce: "Either of us can break the contract whenever we want, even if nobody violated the contract, and this triggers me giving you half of my stuff and income and you giving me half of your stuff and income." From there, whoever has more "stuff and income" is the loser.

Why would a guy want to subject himself to that type of legal contract? I can think of several reasons (ex. she has more stuff/income), but that's beside the point of this post. The point is to recognize the "marriage contract" for what it is: a contract. It is not a new entity. It is not a god that acts as judge over you. It's a simple IF/THEN clause you sign with someone else that in the absence of a pre-nup subjects you to the default laws of the state you're in.

To that end, a contract isn't a moral obligation to the terms therein. You can still do whatever you want to do. It simply lays out a penalty for your failure to live up to the terms you agreed to. If you don't want to live up to those terms, then don't - and accept the penalty you signed onto. People do this all the time at law - breaking bad contracts because they are more advantaged to go in a different direction. Do you think two CEOs in a corporate joint venture think to themselves, "I know it's not in the agreement, but I should disadvantage my company's position and make our shareholders mad in order to appease our business partner ... you know, because that's what business partners are supposed to do." I know it's not a perfect parallel because marriage isn't quite like a business, but the point still stands.

Or if you find that the benefit you get from the contract is valuable enough to you, hold up your end and keep the contract alive and going. Just recognize that in the marriage contract the person with less "stuff and income" is under no obligation to fulfill their end, and if they decide to walk away, the person with more "stuff and income" still pays the same contractual penalty as if he were the one to have breached the contract, even if he did nothing wrong.

THRILL OF THE CHASE

I didn't mean to write this section, but it kind of rolled out as I was typing the application section, so I decided to make it its own thing. As I said before: women aren't attracted to husbands (at least the way society describes them). They're attracted to the single bachelor who had his life together before he met her - the guy who did what he wanted, when he wanted, because there were no social judgments compelling him toward a certain lifestyle. She's attracted to the guy who doesn't need her - who could walk away on a moment's notice if he felt like it, and probably be even better off than if he'd stayed.

But it goes deeper than that. Consider the old saying, "Women are the gatekeepers of sex; men are the gatekeepers of commitment." Now also consider how much women enjoy dating around. Let's be honest, it's not because they're just as horny as men all the time. Just as a man considers himself to have "conquered" or been "successful" with a woman when he's had sex with her, so also does a woman "conquer" or "succeed" with a man when she's managed to lock down his commitment. Just as a man mistakenly assumes that marriage ends the chase of his wife's sexuality, so also do women mistakenly assume that marriage should end the chase of their husband's commitment. And just as men are polygamous with their desire for sexual conquest, so also are women hypergamous with their commitment conquests, which is what prompts things like branch-swinging. After all, once you've climbed Denali, you just don't feel as satisfied climbing Pike's Peak. You set your sights on Mt. Everest.

But what would happen if she climbed Pike's Peak, then the next day found that some tectonic plates shifted and the mountain's now a few hundred feet taller and harder to climb? Well, now she can't say she's really locked down Pike's Peak. She's going to have to go at it again. What would happen if she locked down her man's commitment and got him to marry her, then she found out that his commitment wasn't as locked down as she once thought? Or what if she had his commitment, but found that there were other parts of his inner-most being that he was holding back - that he hadn't yet trusted her with yet? Surely she would find it a new challenge to get her man to commit even those parts to her, which he otherwise reserved for himself, which is why a man's attractiveness goes up as the woman finds more and more mysterious things about him. It's fun for her to chase after those things, persuading him to unlock them to her.

Just as men love the thrill of the chase of a woman's sexuality and will hop from woman to woman to get it, in the same way, women love the thrill of the chase of a man's commitment and will hop from man to man to get it. It's as much of a drug to them as the high a guy gets from all the sexual IOIs he gets from a new woman. When a man views "the marriage" as a concept in itself, it puts a stop to the chase. It re-frames how men and women relate with each other into an entirely new paradigm focused on intangible standards that make the man and woman assume that "the chase" is over and there are bigger fish to fry. [For the Christian: does "the chase" of Christ stop as soon as you're saved?]

APPLICATION

The way I interact with my wife isn't oriented around "improving the marriage" or "being a good husband." From time to time, it may be convenient to use such shorthand, but looking back I see that this type of language does a serious disservice to any man who is already struggling to live in his own frame. The way I interact with my wife is oriented around meeting my goals. As I pursue my goals, I take a few steps forward. If my wife doesn't walk with me, she gets left behind. This shows her that my commitment is to my own purposes and not to her. That keeps the mountain growing. That keeps her chasing me - because she knows that somewhere along the way, as I keep walking forward she'll be left in the dust and my commitment to her will be little more than a silhouette in the horizon until she earns it back by catching up - and I reward her as she does so. This is fun for her and freeing for me.

Now, my goals aren't antagonistic toward my wife. I don't make it a point to make her miserable just to screw with her, as the blue pill objectors accuse. On the contrary, when I accept the fact that I am my own man, and I have sufficiently mitigated the risks of our "marriage contract" being broken, I am free to be the same guy she first fell in love with - the guy who had a mission that's more important than her, who had options, who didn't cave to social pressures and stigmas about what a "husband" or "marriage" should look like. That's the guy whose wife is constantly striving to help him, to please him, and to keep him committed and who is just as excited to do these things in the marriage as she was when they were dating. That's the guy whose wife is happy. More importantly: that's the guy who's happy.