How old is r/PurplePillDebate... 9 years? For that long, we've argued back and forth on the redpill stance on marriage. Our standpoint is simple: marriage isn't worth it since half of them end in divorce and men have more to lose from a divorce. Bluepillers have responded in mostly the same way. I'll post a few threads demonstrating bluepilled arguments and ask if you notice a pattern.

A 50% Divorce Rate does not mean you have a 50% chance of divorce.

In this PPD thread, the OP argues that men need to stop seeing marriage as a gamble; just because half of marriages end in divorce, doesn't mean there's a 50% chance that your marriage will end in a divorce. As long as you put in the work to manage a marriage, your personal divorce rate can reach 0%.

Low education and getting married young correlate with higher divorce rates.

In this PPD thread, the OP argues that men shouldn't marry young or uneducated unless they want to boost their divorce likelihood.

The divorce rate isn't as scary as men here make it out to be.

In this PPD thread, the OP argues that men shouldn't be afraid of nearly half of all marriages ending in divorce since you can lower the risk by marrying at an older age, marrying a college-educated woman, or having a first marriage.

You see the consistency? The bluepill standpoint seems to be that we shouldn't view marriage as risky since we have a responsibility to take the steps necessary to mitigate the likelihood of divorce.

Now here's the kicker. I've been planning to make an in-depth post analyzing the divorce rates of international marriages as a part of my series of posts on the topic of dating abroad. Although international marriages are an under-researched field, my sources show that their divorce rates range from being slightly higher to far lower than those of local marriages. For this post however, the only source I'll use is this analysis of the divorce rates of couples from the reality Tv show 90 day fiance.

The source ranks installments of the 90-day fiance series by the success rates of their couples. This is what it finds:

90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days - 29% success rate.

90 Day: The Single Life - 36% success rate.

90 Day Fiancé - 54% success rate.

90 Day Fiancé: The Other Way - 58% success rate.

I know what you're wondering now: "you never mentioned any of your sources depicting divorce rates far lower than those of the American divorce rate, why did you strike the first two statistics out? Are you cherrypicking?"

The reason I dismiss the first statistic is because the show Before the 90 Days is centered around couples who are meeting in-person for the first time. Many couples on Before the 90 Days are exploring whether or not they even want to embark on a real relationship before even starting the K-1 visa process, so obviously most of these first-time relationships fail. From speed-dating to arranged marriages, all courting practices involve exploring a number of suitors and options. The majority of men who date abroad using mail order bride agencies don't even marry the first person with whom they've been corresponding. Is it a surprise that a calculation based off the success rates of the very first person they met using international dating can't be used to generalize the practice as a whole? As for 90 Day: The Single Life, I chose to dismiss this firstly since the show follows the dating lives of previous 90 Day Fiance stars (which introduces a confounding factor in that many participants of former mail order brides dating locally, which has nothing to do with international marriage) and once again, the calculation in my source above was based off the success rates with the very first person the stars dated on the show.

Now let's get back on-topic and focus on the last two statistics. The original 90 Day Fiance which depicts more standard international marriages has a divorce rate of 46%, and the show The Other Way which depicts relationships with a longer/stronger dating process has a divorce rate of 42%. 90 Day fiance is already a reality tv show that may profit more from dysfunctional relationships, but let me use this to claim that standard international marriages have divorce rates of 45%: slightly higher than those of local marriages.

Now here's where the prompt of my post plays in: why do bluepillers only sympathize with the risks of marriage when it comes to international ones? Just yesterday, there was an anti-geomaxxing post in which the bluepilled OP claimed that international marriages are probably just as likely to fail as they are to succeed. Upon seeing that claim, I just laughed. For 9 years, we've been trying to get bluepillers to understand why marriages having a 50% divorce rate is a turn-off, but now that we're discussing a type of marriage that benefits men more, they finally get out argument? What ever happened to mitigating risks? It would make sense to dismiss international marriages as a whole if they were super unsuccesful, but as I explained above, they're more or less just as successful as local marriages. Why do you tell us "It's so risky, she might divorce you" instead of what you've been saying all these years, which is "Not half of all marriages must end in divorce as long as you try and make it work."

In fact, let me show you another statistic. Apparently, the divorce rate for childfree couples is 66% unlike the 40% rate for couples with children. That sounds like a far higher risk than anything that could result from international marriages. If bluepillers will go so far to explain the risks of international marriages, which are much less common with lower divorce rates than this, surely they should prioritize warning childfree couples? I heard lesbians have high divorce rates too, but I doubt bluepillers would ever warn them about the risks of marriage either.

Or here's another instance: arranged marriages. The practice is notoriously successful, with a worldwide divorce rate perhaps far below 10%. However, when the benefits of arranged marriages over "love marriages" are discussed, many bluepillers will propose hypotheticals about the resentment that'll brew from their transactional nature. In these marriages with near-zero divorce rtaes, bluepillers will warn us about "risks."

The point of my post is that I've noticed a rampant hypocrisy in that bluepillers are only ready to view marriages as a risk when it comes to marriages that benefit men primarily. No bluepiller would tell a lesbian couple about their risk of divorce, or a childfree couple about their risk of divorce, or a modern western couple about their risk of divorce.

Let's discuss: why do some people think certain marriage arrangements more deserving of warning despite not having significantly high divorce rates?