So I sent him this article that says only the top 18% of marriages are worth it.
I said this:
Interesting (long) stack. In essence saying only the top 20% (18% actually) of people even should get married.
And by top people he means that use their brain properly, that is to use reason to control emotions and plan long term. You know, like Catholic dogma says we should be 😂
I like needling him that Catholicism is just the best.
But his response was actually so awesome I asked him if I could make it into a post. So what follow is all his words.
I disagree with this
I was curious so I asked:
On what basis? You think most marriages are (or were) happy? Or that the happiness factor doesn’t matter?
I consider my marriage to be in that top 18% (and statistically it is) but I also been through two shitty ones.
This was his reply:
I don’t think the happiness factor matters. Peace should be sought, not happiness.
There is no happiness clause in marriage vows.
“Broadly, people aren’t compatible, because people suck. When ~90% of women were married in the 40’s, it was an immense charnel house of suffering and wasted potential.”
People sucking is not an argument against marriage. People would divorce themselves if they could. But they are with themselves until death do them part, so it is better to improve what one can.
Wasted potential? For a career that doesn’t care about them?
“Over only 20 years, only ~18% of marriages are actually still happy and sexually active.”
Who doesn’t think they would end up in the happy marriage category though?
“Marriage is a bad idea even from a purely theoretical point of view
On top of the base rates indicating that it’s a bad idea empirically, the whole idea of being able to accurately predict how people are going to evolve or change over 20-70 years is silly to begin with. And 20 years is pretty much the minimum you have to consider if you want to have kids with that person.”
No, it’s a good idea even from a theoretical point of view. The point is not to need to accurately predict how the person is going to be for the rest of their life, but to raise children and help one another towards Heaven as we make our way through this short life. The problem is not marriage. People are thrown into the world after public education, receive no help or wisdom from elders, and try to find someone to spend the rest of their lives with. Where is God in this, where is courtship? It is no surprise modern marriages often don’t work out. But this isn’t a case against marriage itself for most people. Marriage as it was once understood can and should last until death.
“As soon as no fault divorce opened up in the late 60’s, divorces surged and that was a good thing – it was millions of soul-crushing relationships suddenly able to be dissolved! Not to mention that all the actual female talent that had been shackled to soul-crushing duds were now free to get careers of their own and open bank accounts and live more meaningful lives, which was also great for GDP.”
“I’m not disparaging average people here, who are genuinely paying a big chunk of their income in taxes, I’m disparaging our maximally stupid government spending and policies,… If we’re always and forever spending 6x more than we take in per person, adding more people isn’t going to help.”
Divorces surged when no fault divorce opened up because people prefer to choose what is easier when there are options. This is not highlighting the great “advancements” of the 60s, but rather the weakness of human nature and the proclivity toward sin. In the book Annulment: Your Chance to Remarry within the Catholic Church by Joseph Zwach, it says, “In 1968, for example, only 338 annulments were granted in this country. In 1978, more than 27,000 were granted — an increase of 8000%.” And in 1990, there were 62,824. Was this also a good thing? Not in my opinion.
“great for GDP” is a terrible reason to be against most people marrying. Years ago, IT workers at Disney had to train their Indian replacements. People overall are doing a multigenerational version of this by being cogs in the wheel of a system that is designed to replace us with indifference as the machine heads towards techno-socio-cephalization.
First the author says that divorced women being free to get careers is great for GDP, then he goes on to say that the government is stupid, so “adding more people isn’t going to help.” Which is it?
“And this is largely why some of these men are the biggest proponents of RETVRN-ing to a regime where women are locked out of jobs and bank accounts and are stuck barefoot and pregnant in kitchens, shackled to duds.”
“It’s pretty clear that having approximately any job and “pets and Netflix” and your own place is roughly 10x better than marrying the median man, who in addition to subjecting you to 9 minutes of terrible sex every week, will want you to do his laundry and dishes and cook for him, and spend all your free time raising his awful kids while also working full time, because he can’t afford anything and needs your income for you two to even survive.”
He keeps using duds to refer to men. Who are these women that are shackled to duds? Has he seen the average woman in the US?
Soon they won’t have a job or a husband.
There is no need to disparage a man for not being able to afford anything and needing another income. The average man used to be able to provide for a family on one income. Now this same man is a dud?
Marriage and the family have been under attack on multiple fronts for a long time. Instead of looking at what has led to the decline, the author instead sees marriage itself as something to avoid for most people.
“Actually it’s grimmer than that – they do several splits and find that the post marriage mean effect on happiness is actually negative,…”
If people want happiness, they will never have it. How many women divorce because they are not happy, only to find they are still not happy?
“and the equilibrium is that marriage sucks and is basically net negative for the vast majority of people. Revealed preferences are almost never WRONG, they’re often just not what we’d like to be true, and this is one of those cases.”
“Revealed preferences are almost never WRONG,…” is a wild statement.
“The pro-marriage types want to pretend that marriage is an only-positive soothing balm that improves all things, but that’s only as true as the quality of the marriage itself, and the majority are in fact negative, and this is why everyone has been opting out and marriage is a luxury good now.”
I don’t know who is saying that marriage is only positive. It is another kind of martyrdom. What is society without marriage? A few people marrying while the rest take soma and watch Netflix until they die?
i would say that is about the most cogent response I could expect from anyone, and I’d say he knocked it out of the park.
So… ladies, if you know a woman aged 25-30 that resonates with this, he’s 6’4”, fit, good looking, smart, and honest to a degree I have only met maybe once or twice in my life.
He is also not shy to get stuck in and work like a man possessed. He’s calm, gentle, rational, but I am sure also capable of violence if required
He has a plan for his life, which involves living somewhere with land, making some kids with a woman he loves and that loves him, and he’s not interested in hook up culture and actually would like to get to know a woman properly before entering into a physical relationship.
He’s not especially religious or of any specific denomination, but he embodies proper Catholicism probably better than most Catholics (actual Catholics, not Novus Ordo Churchians) I know. Including me (which is admittedly a low bar).
So… if you or someone you know might be interested… it would be a shame for such a specimen to not reproduce.
Feel free to post a comment and get in touch.
And no, he didn’t ask me to do this.
This post was originally published on my Substack. Link here
