The topic of marriage is a big deal to the internet. Sort of. Most sectors of the manosphere proudly declare that “marriage is a bad deal for men”, while the majority of the right wing/traditional/conservative section of the internet thinks everybody needs to get married and have kids, which most religions and governments also agree with. Plus, there’s some kind of birth rate decrease that internet people won’t shut up about as they fear-monger about how the human population is going to zero. Really they’re just concerned that the economy is going to crash when the next generation is smaller than the current one. Which is a real possibility.
But honestly, The Red Pill and the internet manosphere are old-hat now. They aren’t an edgy and exciting new movement that’s pissing people off. Which means that marriage isn’t really that much of a hot-button issue any more. People don’t get emotionally charged about the radical idea of some internet men shouting “don’t get married”, or emotionally charged about the opposite radical idea “get married because [God, politics, government, white supremacy, economy, happiness, whatever]”. Everyone just recites their on-brand viewpoints for clout and moves along. Boring.
The internet makes everything boring eventually. Which I guess is a little sad because marriage is kind of a big deal. An important decision.
But weirdly, marriage is only a big deal because of the consequences it brings. Marraige is not a big deal or an important decision because of what marriage actually is. Because marriage actually isn’t much.
When a couple gets married, the status of the couple changes in the eyes of their government (legally), their religion (in the eyes of God, if they’re religious), and society (socially).
The legal effects of marriage vary by jurisdiction, with no two countries (or states within countries) having 100% identical laws. But most of the United States has a pretty average smattering of legal effects, so here’s an example of some of the ways your life changes legally if you’re married and live there:
You’re married now. So you can’t get married again until you get un-married through a divorce proceeding recognized by your government. A divorce proceeding is an official legal process that requires filing documents with the court system and agreeing upon a division of assets and child custody (if applicable), or having a division forced upon the couple by the courts if agreement cannot be reached. You can also get un-married by showing your government the death certificate for your spouse, which requires your spouse dying, which sucks a lot. In either case, once you’re married, you need your government’s permission to be not married any more.
You can pay taxes a little bit differently. Brief summary is the United States will let a married couple use a slightly more advantageous tax table than two single people when calculating how much tax a household owes. It also allows some tax credits and deductions related to raising children (if applicable). There’s a bit more nuance and complexity to this, but for purposes of what the common man actually cares about, we can just sum up this entire issue as “small tax benefit”.
A few other legal defaults change that don’t have a huge effect in most people’s day-to-day lives.
For example, you can’t be legally required to testify against your spouse in criminal court, while if you weren’t married, you could be held in contempt of court if you refused to testify after receiving a subpoena. If this is a relevant issue in your life, you should be the one telling stories on the internet, not me.
If you die without a will, your state’s probate law will ensure your spouse and children inherit most of your belongings. If you die with a will that was written before you got married, or with a will that weirdly leaves off your spouse or any children, there are some legal things they can do to get some of your belongings anyway.
There are also some fiddly insurance laws about who can be covered by whose insurance plans and under what circumstances and at what times, and marriage changes some of that.
There are some rules about medical power of attorney for spouses in most states, but we’re really getting into the weeds here.
That’s really about it, give or take. There are a few more bullet points we might toss in, or a few more nitpicky edits we might make to the above, but for the most part, I’ve just described legal marraige. That is what marriage is, in the eyes of the government. Your specific government may vary a little bit; I just used mine as an example.
If you think about it, this unimpressive smattering of legal tweaks is really just a set of indirect ways for your government to give you the nod to indicate that your social status has changed from “single people” to “married couple”. We could discuss what changes happen socially or religiously when a couple gets married, but those vary significantly depending not just on where you live but on who specifically you let into your social circles. The only constant across all religions and social circles is “people see you differently”. If you’re religious, one of those “people” might be God.
So marriage is a legal status that affects your tax, insurance, and probate defaults and requires a legal divorce proceeding (which involves governmental approval of asset division and child custody) before it is allowed to end, that changes how other people see you socially, and how you’re seen in your house of worship if you have one.
All of the above — everything that marriage is from a legal, religious, and social standpoint — is external. None of the above has much to do with the actual marriage itself.
This is by design. We can’t run around telling people how to manage the deeply personal and very individual minute details of their marital relationship. There can’t be enforceable laws specifying how often a couple needs to have sex or what types of sex they have, or laws specifying how much income either member needs to bring home, or who is supposed to do what chores or what childcare tasks, or how the couple is supposed to treat each other. Religions and social circles may be a little more suggestive about how a marriage ought to go than your government, but even these entities don’t set out a lot of specificity when it comes to sex, money, chores, childcare, or behavior other than some generic “make sure these things are going okay and be cool to each other”.
This means that when you and your spouse enter into the legal, religious, and social status known as marriage, there are zero actual requirements about the marriage itself. There is no obligation for either person to have sex with the other person, to have children, to have employment or earn any kind of income, to do any kind of housework or home maintenance, to do any kind of child care, or even to be nice or respectful to each other. A person can deny their spouse sex, refuse to have kids, refuse to work or make money, refuse to work in the home, and act like a jerk toward their spouse - and they are still married and have not violated any laws or rules. They’re only not married if they ask their government’s permission to have a divorce and get a government-approved division of assets and child custody signed by a judge.
You can stay married forever, without having sex, kids, income, housework, and while being jerks to each other - you can even cheat on each other - and you are still married until you get the government’s permission to not be married.
Presumably, each couple comes to their own personal understanding about their sex life, finances, how many children they want, how to raise the kids, who does what around the house, and what treatment they’re willing to tolerate from each other. But if either spouse unilaterally ignores or changes this understanding - they are still married and have not violated any laws or rules. They’re only not married if they get their government’s permission, as above.
Getting married is pretty easy. The rules vary by jurisdiction, but you pretty much just have to be legal adults, sign some paperwork, and pay a fee. Sometimes there’s a waiting period or some suggested 80-IQ course you take. There are hardly any rules controlling this process, and as noted above, pretty much zero rules about what you ought to actually do while you’re married. And once you’re married, the only stuff that changes for you is a few legal defaults and people seeing you differently. Your spouse might voluntarily change some behavior now that you’re married, but that’s purely optional.
In contrast, getting divorced is a lot harder. There’s a lot of law surrounding divorce, a lot more religious rules about it, and a much bigger social stigma and much larger pile of societal opinions about it.
It almost seems like in the eyes of the government, religion, and society, divorce is a lot more important than marriage. In fact, most of the rules and laws surrounding “marriage” are actually rules and laws about the eventual divorce and how it will be handled.
Said another way: Your “marriage license” has nothing to do with “marriage”. It imposes no requirements on your marriage. None. Not a single obligation (other than an acknowledgement that you need your government’s permission to not be married any more). Nothing about sex, love, kids, money, housework, behavior — nothing. Not a single obligation.
Your “marriage license” is really more of a divorce license. By obtaining a marriage license, you are agreeing that if you ever want to not be married any more, you need permission through a divorce proceeding, and that you will submit yourself to your state’s laws and abide by its decisions regarding assets and child custody when you go through this process.
Your marriage license is a pre-divorce agreement that sets out what your obligations will be when you get divorced.
This is not an accident. When we stop to think about what marriage is actually for, this is by design.
Women get pregnant. Men don’t.
Back in ye olden times, it was a pretty huge disaster if a man had a bunch of kids with a woman, then just disappeared. The woman and her children would be left with no money, and the woman couldn’t work to make her own money because she had a bunch of kids making that impossible.
This meant that women couldn’t just up and have kids with a guy. The risk was too high. They needed some kind of security measure in place to incentivize the man (and his money) to stay. Marriage was the compromise. A man would agree that in the event of divorce (it’s a divorce license, not a marriage license, remember?), he pays a lot of money to support the woman and children. With this agreement in place, a woman could have children with a man, comfortable that if he left, the government and society would use his wealth to make sure she and the kids were taken care of.
This arrangement would also incentivize the man to stay and help out, and to behave well toward his wife and be as helpful as possible, so she doesn’t just kick him out and let the government give her his money.
The act of marriage is an act of pre-divorce, by design.
The act of marriage is restrictive (even punitive) toward the sex that doesn’t get pregnant, by design, because it is specifically intended to give security to the sex that does get pregnant at the expense of the sex that doesn’t.
We could debate how unfair or outdated this is to us poor internet men, but honestly, the system isn’t that great for women either. If you get married, have a few kids with a woman, then she divorces you to go back to hooking up with hotter guys who don’t want to date her seriously, those kids still cost a lot of money, restrict her availability for some kinds of employment, and restrict her social availability. Plus, if you’re a working class loser and not rich, the percentage of your paycheck your state takes and gives to your ex-wife isn’t nearly enough to actually support the kids. (Though if you are rich, the percentage of your paycheck your state takes is more than enough to pay for both the kids and the ex-wife, who can retire and spend her days badmouthing you to her friends, and maybe on the internet.)
Entering into a pre-divorce arrangement with your wife sounds pretty terrible, and we try to hide all of this with pillow-talk about love and respect and teamwork, but the pivotal question isn’t really “Is marriage good?” Of course it isn’t. It’s just the best available system we have to start a family. (“Best available” does not mean good. It’s just the best we’ve got when our choices are “Have zero kids”, “Get a girl pregnant out of wedlock”, and “Get married and have kids with your wife”. — Most women worth having kids with will not intentionally get pregnant out of wedlock and enter into some kind of non-standard alpha manly man red pill arrangement with you because you’re just that awesome. If you find some alternative relationship that works for you, that’s great, but it’s really not worth the other 98% of men strategizing and devoting significant thought to your edge case.)
I suppose at the end of the day, marriage is a risk-shifting arrangement. A woman being left with children and no money has been deemed by society to be an unacceptable risk. So we shift the risk to men. A man takes the risk that he might marry and have children with a woman, then have his woman leave, take the children, and take his money.
So the cost-benefit analysis — the crux question — that men are left making today in 2025 is “how badly do I want kids”? If the answer is “I don’t know, maybe?”, which is most men, then probably keep enjoying some quality premarital sex until that maybe resolves for you.
