Rates of marriage are down across the western world. Elephant in the room: are men refusing to marry because of sense of entitlement?

Vodkas21 · 2014-04-12T15:04:30+00:00

Less men are marrying due to less incentives to marry(frankly I can only see disincentives).

The laws are biased against men in the western world especially in divorce court where the mother is able to claim half your assets, your children and you will be paying child support based on your income. If you fail to pay child support you can be punished in the form of loosing your drivers licence and even face time in jail. In some states if you're married over a certain period of time you have to pay alimony which has no place in 2014. The usual stats used are 50% of marriages end in divorce and 70% are initiated by women, one of the most common reason for divorce is dissatisfaction.

Plenty of men are seeing how badly a divorce can go for other men, why take the risk? Here's an example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaC-2lj6HNg.

On top of that you can get the exact same benefits like children and companionship from marriage without getting married.

Overall it's not worth the risk of marrying with the costs of divorce being so high and the benefits being able to be obtained without marrying.

MissPearl · 2014-04-12T15:37:42+00:00

Honestly, a lot of what is going on is also that the nature and implications of marriage has changed over the last couple of centuries.

Some of this is simply because women get a lot less out of marriage- while in the past your participation in society at large was done through a filter of men, ranging from getting a loan to testifying in court. Some societies still restrict this, to one degree or another, but I no longer need a man to leave the house and go do stuff, I can own property in my own name, a male guardian can't compel me to live somewhere, and beyond that, both genders are allowed a lot more sexual leeway- imagine being "ruined" because you stayed in a car for someone too long and didn't marry them?

Meanwhile, in the past there was much more necessity for gender specific labour because domestic life has also been greatly simplified. For example, here is how to make the bed, Victorian style- layers and layers of heavy materials to be stripped off every day and aired (and beaten)- compare that to setting the pillows to right and flapping the duvet back into smoothness- and changing linen covers weekly or once every two weeks- and flipping the mattress twice a year. Almost every single household task has been streamlined. There is still "women's work", but keeping house is not really a job unless your house is the size of a hotel/boarding house or you do fancy pants complicated stuff on a regular basis. Which can be fun, but are really more of an expensive hobby or Pintrest fodder.

Meanwhile the child support component is usually resolved by swabbing the inside of you and the kid's mouth. The brokering that the courts do transcends your relationship with the other parent- probably a good thing, since in the past problem solving was often forced marriage. Actual child care gets more complicated, but reliable birth control means less offspring, and if you're not the US, parental leave is considered a legal right.

The result of this is that a lot of people don't actually need to get married, so they don't. Marriage, as usual remains about legal rights and obligations, and thus ends up being more relevant to people with issues like "we want to be on the same retirement plan" or "I want my partner to have a legal right to advocate for me if I'm incapacitated." This is a valid thing to want, but both genders, in any combination of two non-related adult people that they prefer, have more space to afford to be choosy.

Those_Who_Remain · 2014-04-12T14:53:09+00:00

Or people are less likely to marry since the more traditional views on marriage aren't as commonly adopted by the newer generations anymore.

I doubt it is an entitlement issue from either side.

sh1v · 2014-04-12T18:27:30+00:00

Flawed analogy. High value women have more or less earned the right to be choosy, just as high value men have. You're comparing low value women to high value men which doesn't make sense.

SilverDots · 2014-04-12T14:53:32+00:00

I think you make a good point in regards to the expectations of rpers.

On the one hand, they make claims about how easy it is for a woman to find sex, but no one talks about whether it would be good sex with a partner she'd be attracted to. In the first sense, yes an average woman could probably get sex with ease, but so could an average man if he lowered his standards to anyone.

In regards to the RP guys who want ltrs with beauty queens (9-10s) who don't act like beauty queens? Especially the guys who aren't in the same "SMV" category... I've said before I don't judge transactional relationships (sex for resources) as long as both parties are honest and can end the relationship anytime they see fit. But when guys achieve resources, start attracting babes suddenly, then complain they're being bled dry...well obviously! What did you think was going to happen? That suddenly all the beauties who didn't want you before are suddenly going to give you love and loyalty?? And then the kicker, they take their anger at these beautiful scam artists out on all of womandom and suddenly all women are hypegamous, cheating whores who deserve to be dread gamed and negged.

I would say this to TRP: be honest about what you want, and be realistic about what it will bring you in life. If you want a beauty queen, period, you are probably going to be scraping at the shallow end of the barrel in terms of personality and character-don't complain, you reap what you sow. If you want love, loyalty, a companion, you should be looking at compatibility of attitudes, morals, values, hobbies-not purely physical attractiveness.

newguyacct · 2014-04-14T18:59:57+00:00

Rates of marriage are down because both sexes show they don't want to get married.

Your premise is wrong.

And RPs are not causing the downward trend. They're a weird little corner of the internet.

FortunateBum · 2014-04-14T19:08:55+00:00

OP, how do you know it isn't women who are refusing to marry? I'm not sure what you're basing this assumption on.

lev21pirate · 2014-04-12T15:05:50+00:00

There's no inherent problem with complaining about something, so long as you do something about it (To remedy it).

The main issue is that women would want men to change to accustom them while TRP (at the very least) tries to guide men to reach a set goal.

Specifically about marriage, regardless of how a prospect is rated , the risk stays the same. If i'm going take the risk of losing 1/2 my stuff , it better be worth it.

Aerobus · 2014-04-12T20:32:19+00:00

It has little/nothing to do with men feeling that they can do better, and has everything to do with divorce court skewed heavily in favor of women.

[deleted] · 2014-04-13T00:06:58+00:00

This should help http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/7x78v/what_do_modern_men_want_in_women/c07omtc

roe_ · 2014-04-13T15:36:32+00:00

No - from what I've seen (second-hand) of the dating world, it is insanely combative. Speaking generally, we seem to be living in an age of narcissism where people have no clue how to form emotionally connected relationships, and people date seemingly with the sole aim of bonking genitals together.

The guys (and some girls) I know who are dating are willing to make trade-offs, but past a certain age, it's really tough, because all the good people are in stable marriages, and what you've got left are damaged people practising serial monogamy. (The obvious question or observation is that the people I'm talking about are damaged themselves - in some cases, maybe, but some of them are just unlucky - you've just got filter through a huge number of people to find someone else who was "unlucky").

Also, honestly, it is as much the case that the men I've watched wanted an LTR and it was the woman who just wanted FWB and didn't want to be locked down.

taw · 2014-04-12T20:47:06+00:00

J4G has ton of data suggesting it's mostly women who don't want to marry, not men. I'd consider that as reliable as gender statistics ever get.

As for entitlement, family laws are extremely stacked against men, and risk of divorce and ex-wife taking half your money and all your children is very high, so it would be understandable if men didn't want to get married. It's a bit surprising women who benefit from this system don't want to do so even more.

(I don't really buy the RP worldview that men are discriminated against in general, but family law is one huge exception - if you're male, the courts will reliably screw you because of your gender, and I don't see how anybody can seriously dispute tons of data supporting this)

newguyacct · 2014-04-12T15:26:53+00:00

Are men and terpers entitled little princes who don't have a sense of their worth like the females they complain about?

Are women entitled when they want to ride the cock carousel all the way until they hit the wall, and then expect a guy to accept that?
Are women entitled when they want to have their cake and eat it too?
Are women entitled when they want society to do everything for them?
Are women entitled when they want everything and think it's possible?

Bakerofpie · 2014-04-12T16:21:20+00:00

News at 10: people want to marry the hottest, most valuable partner they can find.

Some men feel entitled to women they can't earn, but just can't accept when someone is out of their league. Both genders have those types who just can't see reality

Overall, though, I think it is a lack of trust and belief in the institution. Men aren't refusing to marry because they can't find a woman with big enough tits. They're refusing to marry because they're afraid of high divorce rates and being raked over the coals if she leaves.

[deleted] · 2014-04-12T17:15:20+00:00

Why would any man, given all the medical and technological miracles of the modern world, get married?

Whisper · 2014-04-12T19:30:29+00:00

What is the incentive for a man to enter the modern version of marriage?

goatismycopilot · 2014-04-12T15:21:17+00:00

Speaking as one of those average looking women, I don't feel slighted when men aren't attracted to me.

Of course I am post wall. I think people in general idealize what they want in their potential mates/SOs, I think it is a human thing rather than an entitlement thing. And there is an added bonus sometimes for inexplicable reasons people who differ in perceived attractiveness end up married or happily dating one another. However, that is the exception and here in American we are all subject to propaganda about how individualistic and exceptional we are. I would hope once people reach fully formed adulthood they might have the brilliant insight that is complete bullshit but in some ways we are an adolescent society.

raouldukeesq · 2014-04-12T15:44:38+00:00

Marriage is trending towards obsolescence because people can survive just fine without it. Humans were never designed to mate for 20+ years. For a while it was necessary and if it worked out fine. But for many people it is just not needed.

alphabetmod · 2014-04-13T03:54:45+00:00

I'm gonna leave this post up because there's some decent discussion going on; it's toeing the line of a leading question. I don't think you, OP, did it on purpose and this is one of those times where moderator discretion comes into play. I'll just add... next time you submit something here try to keep the questions more neutral.

gepeg-libre · 2014-04-13T04:20:35+00:00

I think everybody's just starting to notice that marriage is an increasingly outdated arrangement surrounded by really fuckin weird and sometimes thoroughly shady laws.

But also yes, terpers, like lots of people, are super entitled when they're not being downright vicious.

tubefox · 2014-04-13T06:53:49+00:00

No, because men don't feel "entitled" to anything except for not subsidizing the lives of some woman they don't particularly care for and who doesn't appreciate them. There's a huge difference between feeling "entitled" to support yourself and no one else, and feeling entitled to someone else's support.

5th_Law_of_Robotics · 2014-04-13T13:45:55+00:00

Or perhaps the benefits no longer outweigh the costs for many.

No one is owed a marriage, so it isn't selfish or wrong to opt out of it.

Damned_Hedonist · 2014-04-12T20:42:15+00:00

It used to be men had to commit and marry to get access to sex at a young age. This was a fair trade because women gave up their youth in exchange for lifetime security. Now that women are producing their own income security and waiting much longer to seek marriage, many men are opting out due to a less favorable cost/benefit analysis. Men have captured a larger slice of the pie that feminism created, with the assumption women would be happier as a result. But the paradox has been that women's happiness and life satisfaction levels have declined since the 1970's in absolute terms and relative to men.

[deleted] · 2014-04-13T14:53:54+00:00

You're wrong. The Millennial generation that is coming of age in the Anglosphere right now contains the most entitled women (especially the white women) in human history. They are of the worst quality to ever exist in human history in terms of being considered marriageable for a man with any self-respect. They bring nothing to the table except a used-up (by all colors and creeds of cock I might add) vagina.

Denswend · 2014-04-12T14:59:35+00:00

There is a difference between the women and men's entitlement (as defined in your post). Both genders feel the entitlement towards a superior (physically, emotionally, financially, whatever you want) member of the opposite gender and that much is certain. The difference is in commitment - this is essentially a contract in which both sides sacrifice a part of their liberty in order to achieve stability. In order for people to continually want to have this kind of sacrifice of liberty, the terms of the contract must be acceptable. Ask yourself, would you work for an employer who pays you lower than the minimum wage and drives you as a slave? No, and this is why it's profitable to both the employee or employer to have a contract which provides a net benefit for both.

Marriage (I'll use this as an umbrella term for commitment) is a form of social contract of this kind. Marriage is not necessary for procreation. Love is a metaphysical value of commitment and as something metaphysical, it is of no concern for a rational study of physical. So marriage is strictly a social contract. As a social contract, it requires a willing infringement on one's liberty, if the willing part is not true, then it is essentially a form of tyranny.

What TRP claims is following : Men feel entitled to sex, women to commitment and this is what they mean when they say that a woman who is "her wall", so to speak, will increase her efforts in getting a commitment. If men are being forced to do something that women feel entitled to, that's bad. Imagine if all women were forced to give men what they feel entitled to. Any attack on a man's freedom to settle/not settle is tantamount to an attack on a woman's ability to give/not give sex.

TRP claims following, women are the keepers of sex, men are the keepers of commitment - only women can willingly give sex, while men can willingly give commitment. Thus, each gender has its own standards at which they would give what they keep. Women have their standards of to whom they will give their sex and men have their own standards of whom they will give their commitment. The main difference between sex and commitment, is that one has a series of economical and social characteristic that dwarfs the other, because one is a concrete social contract and thus is promoted/ignored by the society in general.

For example, see the following link and especially the part on economy :

The concept of 'no fault' divorce by itself may not be unfair. The concepts of asset division and alimony may also be fair in the event of serious wrongdoing by the husband. However, the combination of no-fault divorce plus asset division/alimony is incredibly unfair and prone to extortionary abuse. The notion that she can choose to leave the marriage, yet he is nonetheless required to pay her for years after that even if he did not want to destroy the union, is an injustice that should not occur in any advanced democracy. Indeed, the man has to pay even if the woman has an extramarital affair, possibly even being ordered to pay her psychiatric fees. Bogus claims by 'feminists' that women suffer under divorce are designed to obscure the fact that she is the one who filed for divorce. Defenders of alimony insist that a woman seeking a divorce should not see a drop in living standards, but it is somehow acceptable for the husband to see a drop even if he did not want a divorce. I would go further and declare that any belief that women deserve alimony on a no-fault basis in this day age is utterly contradictory to the belief that women are equals of men. How can women both deserve alimony while also claiming equality? In rare cases, high-earning women have had to pay alimony to ex-husbands, but that is only 4% of the time, vs. the man paying 96% of the time. But it gets worse; much worse, in fact.

Even if the woman chooses to leave on account of 'boredom', she is still given default custody of the children, which exposes the total hypocrisy of feminist claims that men and women should be treated equally. Furthermore, the man is required to pay 'child support' which is assessed at levels much higher than the direct costs of child care, with the woman facing no burden to prove the funds were spent on the child, and cannot be specified by any pre-nuptial agreement. The rationale is that 'the child should not see a drop in living standards due to divorce', but since the mother has custody of the child, this is a stealthy way in which feminists have ensured financial maintenence of the mother as well. So the man loses his children and most of his income even if he did not want divorce. But even that is not the worst-case scenario.

The link also has another link which accurately states why commitment in the form of marriage is disfavouring men in legal and financial matters. Would you be willing to employ yourself for the employer notorious for giving bad pay and bad conditions of work? This is why terpers and to some extent, MRAs, refuse to enter the commitment, and why they have every right to do so much like the women have the right to deny men sex.

So they plate these good enough girls and we end up with the clusterfuck that is the western world.

Agreed, they unwillingly contribute to the feminist panic and we will face a neo-Malthusian disaster. But as I argued above, they are simply reacting to the problem in a passive way - they're opting out, and they have every right to do so.

EDIT: It won't be a neoMalthusian disaster, but a some form of Spenglerian disaster. Marriage is a foundation of society that society can't afford to collapse. It's way more dangerous to have men stop commiting than women stop giving sex. But in a society like this, where they are only disincentives are given. With no artificial means to ensure marriage, both men and women will go back to their primal urges (polygamous and hypergamous). What TRP does, is accustom the men to the system that is, instead of trying to change the system - TRP is essentially an adaptation to the world, a coat you wear when the night is cold. The ones who are trying to change the system are MRA and feminists. And we know who wins this one.

jacks1000 · 2014-04-13T00:46:51+00:00

Men are not by nature monogamous. Women tend to prefer serial monogamy, while men might prefer polygamy.

Since the breakdown of life long marriages, attractive women get their serial monogamy and attractive men get their polygamy.

Plain Janes and betas get the leftovers.

Women started the marriage strike, men are ending it. Besides, marriage is for gays now.

[deleted] · 2014-04-13T01:43:23+00:00

Sexual selection is amoral. Meaning that attaching value to it is meaningless. The bitterness of TRP that many men grapple with is perhaps what you are responding to. This is why we say TRP is a bitter pill to swallow. Because men become angry or upset that they have been lied to. The matrix isn't real. So yes you get a lot of misdirected vitriol. No-one is entitled to anything. We simply put out what we believe to be truth about the world and people can do what they want with it.

A woman is hypergamous because it's in her evolutionary nature to do so. She picks from a list of suitors and feels justified and entitled to do so. A man tries to select up, but will select down or lateral because that is the way of things.

So, it's not that men believe they deserve a good looking woman, it's just that the women that are good looking in society tend to be hypergamous and shit-testing. Or as you would call it, princesses.

I think part of TRP is re-calibrating what a man finds value in. A man shouldn't in my opinion, accept a fat, post-wall, divorced, single-mother or 4-6 rate woman because his worth is better than that. He should work on self-improvement, because that is what will garner him what he wants.

I think to an extent you're seeing marriage rates drop for a variety of reasons. Religion is also on the decline in the west, so it's probably a correlation to that as well. Perhaps women feel less of a desire to obtain wealth through a relationship (which while this may betrue, in terms of sexual strategy you still can 'override' this and cut to the core of a woman's evolution through gamesmanship, but that's a different conversation altogether).

purplepill2 · 2014-04-13T04:30:40+00:00

I do think that terpers are pretty hypocritical in thinking that "women are the problem". What I really think about marriage rates being down though is that it's because people have more options.

Marriage isn't mandatory. It's becoming more and more acceptable to not get married, and people are less likely to get married because it's just "what adults do". I personally think it's a good thing if more people are happy to have their own life rather than get hitched to whoever is closest. I think the high divorce rates are caused by people that have had society put unnecessary weight on getting married, and in the long run fewer marriages will mean fewer divorces, because there won't be people that married just to be married because everyone else is or shit like that.

Title	Rates of marriage are down across the western world. Elephant in the room: are men refusing to marry because of sense of entitlement?
Author	[deleted]
Upvotes	6
Comments	73
Date	April 12, 2014 2:10 PM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/22urhn/rates_of_marriage_are_down_across_the_western/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/rates-of-marriage-are-down-across-the-western.285923 https://theredarchive.com/post/285923

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