Marriage Marriage: Not a Big Deal (to You)

[Chase]

There are a lot of women for whom marriage is a BIG DEAL. This is THE day they have been dreaming about since they first started playing with Wedding Barbie at 4 years old. They already have their wedding dresses sketched out on paper, the colors of their bridesmaid's dresses planned out, the decor, the venue, even the tuxedo for the bridegroom... all they need is the man to plug into that suit.

What you absolutely, positively do NOT want for marriage are two things:

• Getting "plugged in" to a role she's looking for a man to fill, rather than her being with you for you
• Her outsized expectations getting transferred over to YOU

Here's why you don't want these things:

If you're plugged into a role, that means you'll be expected to PLAY that role, and anything you do that's a deviation from it will be a disappointment and a let down. And, because a woman typically has 20 or 30 years of expectations built up for what marriage will be (typically: magical, phantasmagoric, and AMAZING, right up until the day that she dies 70 years after her wedding day, within breaths of her devoted husband, whom she simply could not bear to live without), any man she pins those expectations on is going to be a big letdown for her when she realizes what marriage is: essentially, a continuation of EXACTLY THE SAME RELATIONSHIP with EXACTLY THE SAME PERSON she was dating BEFORE she married him. Who'da thunk it?

So how do you get around this? By not coming close to matching her ideal husband role at all from Day 1, and by never making marriage a big deal.

Most women expect marriage to either be A) hard-won from the man (he resists it for ages, and finally she wins him over) OR B) desperately sought-after by the man (he chases after her professing his love and how he knows she's "The One").

For you, if you plan to enter into marriage with a woman and you don't want her to end up being mildly disappointed with you and your marriage a few years out for the rest of your lives, you must be different. How can you possibly do marriage differently?

Well, it's by not being Option A (the guy terrified of commitment who is finally tamed) or Option B (the guy crazy for commitment who gets a ring on her finger faster than you can say "I do"); instead, it's by being the Option C guy - the guy who doesn't care one way or another about marriage.

"Sure, we can get married," you say. "If it matters to you; it's not a big deal to me - it's just a social contract. Marriage is really about showing OTHER people you're together - it doesn't change anything between you and I." She needs to understand that this is your view - it's just a contract, and it's a social construct that's only existed for a few years and people were getting together, making babies, and dying for a VERY LONG TIME before marriage ever existed, and they will still be doing so long after marriage goes the way of the Rite of Becoming a Man and gets forgotten by society. This is something you'll do for her, if it's important to her, and you don't care.

Some women will be confused by this; because everyone around them thinks marriage is A REALLY BIG DEAL, this is a hard viewpoint for them to wrap their heads around. Some women will be INFURIATED by this; how can you ruin their special moment by not being a Commitment Phobe or a Commitment Phile? Either one of those is fine, but to not care...? That implies that marriage is not A REALLY BIG DEAL!

You'll just have to hold your ground. You'll sign the contract for her if she wants; but you don't want a super-huge ceremony, because you're busy and it's a waste of time and money. If she wants to do a really big ceremony, she can set that up on her own, but tell her not to get unreasonable expectations because the only difference between your relationship before marriage and your relationship after marriage is that now she can tell people you're both married, and that's it.

Essentially, the role you must play is temporing her expectations so she doesn't build them up and then crash afterward, then pin the blame on you for not being the ideal husband, get dissatisfied, and cause problems later, acting out her dissatisfaction. Instead, you circumscribe the whole process by grounding the wild Disney "event" expectations ("Once this event occurs, I will be happy forever!") that she's been brainwashed with by society since birth with a cold reality-bath - so that both your lives aren't miserable afterward.

(for the record, I've been married, and I've dated women with wild unrealistic marriage expectations, and I've gone through this multiple times already... so yeah, I have an inkling what I'm talking about here!)

Happy matrimony

Chase

 

[Humay]

Hey Chase, this is a great post. Thanks for putting it on here.
Just wondering though, if you take this approach, what really is the point in getting married? To be frank, i don't see why one would go through all that bother if he doesn't give a sh*t. Even if it's just an act, just throwing the diamond ring at her seems a bit wrong. If you're apathetic about everything related to marriage, wouldn't that disqualify you as a long-term boyfriend/husband (in the bad sense here. Assuming you actually want to be married)? Not only that, but i thought marriage was the epiphany of romance and devotion. Not giving that to a girl you've been with for a long time seems awfully selfish.

I've always thought if someone wants to say he's completely won a girl's heart, he would have to progress through the different levels of love to 'marriage' before he can truly say so. Saying a girl is his when she doesn't have a ring on her finger is a bit premature. It doesn't really apply, because there's no real incentive (like a loving husband and kids she promised to commit to) to stop her from leaving the guy apart from emotion alone (and emotion is never in stasis). The lack of security seems a bit disconcerting, considering the only alternative is to keep playing with her heart the rest of your life- which must be exhausting.

Or are you trying to say that the whole marriage idea is a sham, where once a girl 'has you', she loses all romantic interest in you? And in order to have a fulfilling romantic life with the woman you love, you must stay in the 'lover' role forever, and never go near the 'husband/long-term boyfriend' role?

It just seems a bit dark and cold, especially as one who's been raised by the idea that marriage is some wonderful fairy tale event. But as you've been married already and been with more women than i could probably count, i'm sure you know best. Everything i wrote is just my opinion, and i'll be happy for you to prove me wrong if i am.

 

[Chase]

Humay-

Good questions here.

Just wondering though, if you take this approach, what really is the point in getting married? To be frank, i don't see why one would go through all that bother if he doesn't give a sh*t.

The point of marriage is not for you - typically, as you get more experienced with women, you start to realize that you don't need a social institution to tell you whether your relationship is "official" or not. It is, rather, for the girl, who either a) still cares about marriage herself, or, more likely, b) needs marriage to save face and reputation in a society that shames women for being in long-term unmarried relationships (or for having children unmarried, if you'd like to have children at some point).

It's kind of like getting a degree from a good school even if you already own your own business making lots of money - you don't actually need it for anything tangible (i.e., a job, to know how to run a business, etc.) - but you might get one purely for social reasons, since many people think one way or another about you based purely on your paper credentials. Even in the West, marriage still carries a great deal of prestige and weight for women - as much as a girl might pretend she doesn't care or is beyond it, all she has to do is step outside the house and listen to her friends and family and the media, and she cares again.

Even if it's just an act, just throwing the diamond ring at her seems a bit wrong.

I agree - I'd never buy a ring. You can sign the contract for the girl's sake, but I'd make it clear that you're doing this for her to help her save face socially and because it's something she thinks she needs and you care about her. Make it very clear that this is something nice you're doing for her, not the other way around.

The tradition of ring buying came about in earlier generations when men needed to convince women to marry them - prior to the 1970s, men in the West chased women for marriage, and women weren't sure, and hemmed and hawed, and worried about giving up their freedom. That's changed substantially, and now women are the ones complaining about how men won't "grow up" and "be responsible" and are "afraid of commitment" - in other words, instead of men pressuring women to marry (by buying rings), it's now become women pressuring men to marry (by publicly shaming them). The dynamic is very different - rings are outdated.

Not to mention, there's this: Pricenomics Blog: Diamonds Are Bullshit

I advise against doing anything cliché like diamond buying. If you must give her some token of your fidelity, I'd recommend finding out what her birthstone is, and giving her a ring with that - it's more personal, more original, more meaningful, and less commercially clichéd.

If you're apathetic about everything related to marriage, wouldn't that disqualify you as a long-term boyfriend/husband (in the bad sense here. Assuming you actually want to be married)?

You may be thinking of competing for a woman based on offering her marriage, which is how a lot of men think they need to compete for women. It's more similar to competing for women by being a really nice guy, though.

Remember that, just like being nice, EVERY guy offers marriage. You're really not offering anything special by saying you're willing to get married. Every girl I've ever taken as a girlfriend has entertained more than her fair share of marriage proposals from all kinds of guys - loving boyfriends, suitors who've wined her and dined her, wealthy guys with high-flying careers, you name it. Offering marriage is like being a swell guy - it's nothing special.

At the same time, you're apathetic about it, but NOT taking it off the table. If you take marriage off the table, that hurts your long-term value offering with a lot of women. If you leave it on the table but communicate you're ambivalent about it, that sends any woman who's truly in love with you wild trying to find another way to tame you.

Girls still get a boost when they get a marriage out of you this way, but optimally you want to smooth that emotion bump out as much as possible. Making marriage as much of a non-event as you can removes a lot of the social "teeth" out of it and prevents it from throwing a monkey-wrench in your relationships (and leaving the woman the one wearing the pants in the household, as most commonly happens).

Not only that, but i thought marriage was the epiphany of romance and devotion. Not giving that to a girl you've been with for a long time seems awfully selfish.

I've been meaning to write a post on processes and events. But essentially, the way most people view things, in their heads, is in terms of events. The way things actually work is as processes. That is to say, most people look at something and say, "Once I have that, things change forever!" But the world doesn't work that way.

Marriage does not change anything between two people. Things remain exactly the same. To get a picture of this in your head, just imagine this: you have a girlfriend you're crazy about whom you've been dating for two years. You live together, make love to her, and she's your best friend. One day, the two of you get married. What changes about how you treat her? Can you come up with anything? Any ideas?

Having been married, and having known scads of married couples young and old, I can tell you quite honestly that I don't think I've met anyone who's ever noted there being any sort of difference.

Conversely, you may be thinking, "What about the wedding day? Isn't that every girl's DREAM?" Which I can understand.

The problem with the "big wedding day" is this: it also comes with a lot of unrealistic expectations. Most girls expect that after the "big wedding day" their lives will somehow become a fairy tale - nothing about them will change, of course, but YOU will change - you will suddenly become Prince Charming, and everything you do will be perfect. There's frequently a "come down effect," where following the initial afterglow of marriage, a girl ends up being disappointed, both with marriage and with you. She thought you were going to become amazing, but you didn't. Then she gets disappointed with you.

By not having the big wedding day, you actually navigate around this. You front-load the disappointment: "Oh. He's not some crazy romantic Prince Charming," and instead you allow emotions to naturally grow up, rather than raise to unrealistic expectations before plunging back down.

It's much better for your long-term relationship health to have relationships gradually trend up, rather than arc dramatically up, then crash back down, which is often what happens after big wedding buildups. High expectations are one of the leading causes of divorce; and I haven't seen any research on it, but I've heard a lot anecdotally on big weddings leading to swift divorces, and you can find a good deal about this (often written by women) if you search around a bit on the Internet, too. The more you can tamp down expectations and have a calm, tiny ceremony (or none at all), the more likely you are to have realistic expectations and make an enduring (rather than disappointing) husband for your bride.

I've always thought if someone wants to say he's completely won a girl's heart, he would have to progress through the different levels of love to 'marriage' before he can truly say so. Saying a girl is his when she doesn't have a ring on her finger is a bit premature. It doesn't really apply, because there's no real incentive (like a loving husband and kids she promised to commit to) to stop her from leaving the guy apart from emotion alone (and emotion is never in stasis). The lack of security seems a bit disconcerting, considering the only alternative is to keep playing with her heart the rest of your life- which must be exhausting.

Personally, I've progressively defined a girl being "yours" further and further as I've aged. When I was young, a girl was "mine" if we had some good flirtation going. Then later she was only mine if I'd slept with her. Later still, I started thinking a girl would really only be yours if you had children with her.

I've reached a point now where I don't think a girl is ever "yours." She's just a girl, and she may be with you now, and she may be in the future, or she may be with someone else. Trying to stake a claim in another person is not a good way of going about things. The better way is to think, "I will give her amazing experiences, to make her want to stay with me as long as she likes, and share amazing experiences back with me."

When I look back on past relationships, I tended to do things wrong once I started thinking of a girl as "mine." That seems to be the point at which you let up, stop focusing on fulfilling her needs so much, and the relationship tips into decline. Relationships are healthier, happier, and much more fulfilling when you never consider a girl "yours," and never consider her heart having been completely won, and instead always consider her a girl who's heart must be won again and again, every single day.

Or are you trying to say that the whole marriage idea is a sham, where once a girl 'has you', she loses all romantic interest in you? And in order to have a fulfilling romantic life with the woman you love, you must stay in the 'lover' role forever, and never go near the 'husband/long-term boyfriend' role?

You must eventually move to fill the provider role if you want to maintain a long-term relationship with a girl. Lover is not enough, especially once you throw pregnancy and children into the mix. A woman gives up a great deal of her own time and prospects to handle pregnancy and raise children, and most women cannot handle doing those things with a man who's too unstable.

The secret to maintaing a healthy long-term relationship is providing a woman just enough stability that she isn't going constantly crazy with fear that she's going to be left in a bad situation (e.g., kids, no source of income, and nobody wanting to date her), but not so much stability that she feels like she completely has you and has no cause to worry about ever losing you (e.g., she can be rude or offensive or stop meeting your needs, and trust that you'll stick around anyway because you're a pushover or you're too locked in).

It just seems a bit dark and cold, especially as one who's been raised by the idea that marriage is some wonderful fairy tale event. But as you've been married already and been with more women than i could probably count, i'm sure you know best. Everything i wrote is just my opinion, and i'll be happy for you to prove me wrong if i am.

I think what people think of as "dark and cold" is usually that love is not forever; that is to say, that you could work really, really hard to find a girl, make her fall completely in love with her, get her, and then later she falls out of love with you and runs off with the pool boy or the handyman. It seems to be because uncertainty is scary, so society tries to protect people by telling them the sweet-sounding lie that once you have something, it's safe.

Once you have a good job, you're safe; you'll never have to worry about not having enough money or looking for another job again.

Once you have a home, you're safe; you'll never have to worry about maintenance or things not working or paying other people again.

Once you have a spouse, you're safe; you'll never have to worry about dating or mate poaching or being alone or not getting laid again.

The reality is, people get laid off from jobs or don't get promoted or get underpaid; people have their homes have expensive maintenance nightmares, or have ridiculous unreasonable fees levied against them by their HOAs, or lose their homes for unpaid property taxes or mortgages that spiral out of control; and people get cheated on, mistreated, ignored, marginalized, and divorced by their spouses.

Not everybody... but a pretty healthy chunk of them.

The truth is, the world is a very uncertain place. And when you hear that, usually you shiver and want to run back into the warmth of certainty. But just like in The Matrix, you realize that certainty isn't actually real; it's an illusion to blind you from reality.

The people who embrace uncertainty tend to lead better lives. When you know you can get laid off, you work harder to be more valuable to employers, develop better skills, save more money, or start your own business. When you know home ownership is expensive and risky, you work harder for a better deal, find a home that will appreciate in value, get a reasonable mortgage, and buy somewhere with lower property taxes and no HOA (or a reasonable HOA, at least). And when you know that a great deal of the time marriages don't end happily ever after - ending either in divorce, or a boring / unsatisfying union that limps on anyway "for the children" - you work harder to find a truly exceptional woman to marry, to run your relationship under the understanding that you must win her heart every day, instead of only once and that's it, and to always maintain that balance between secure enough and stable enough that she isn't going completely crazy, and insecure and unstable enough that she always feels alive, energized, challenged, and excited being with you.

Chase

 

[Humay]

Once again, i'm totally speechless. I don't know what else to say

 

[Marty]

Personally, I've progressively defined a girl being "yours" further and further as I've aged. When I was young, a girl was "mine" if we had some good flirtation going. Then later she was only mine if I'd slept with her. Later still, I started thinking a girl would really only be yours if you had children with her.

I've reached a point now where I don't think a girl is ever "yours." She's just a girl, and she may be with you now, and she may be in the future, or she may be with someone else. Trying to stake a claim in another person is not a good way of going about things. The better way is to think, "I will give her amazing experiences, to make her want to stay with me as long as she likes, and share amazing experiences back with me."

When I look back on past relationships, I tended to do things wrong once I started thinking of a girl as "mine." That seems to be the point at which you let up, stop focusing on fulfilling her needs so much, and the relationship tips into decline. Relationships are healthier, happier, and much more fulfilling when you never consider a girl "yours," and never consider her heart having been completely won, and instead always consider her a girl whose heart must be won again and again, every single day.

Out of the hundreds of thousands of words written in this site, just the paragraphs above would be enough to convince me that it's unique. What I enjoy best in good writing is incisive arguments that uproot common wisdom mercilessly, yet are so compelling that they leave the reader looking about himself in vain for a refutation.

The reality is, people get laid off from jobs or don't get promoted or get underpaid; people have their homes have expensive maintenance nightmares, or have ridiculous unreasonable fees levied against them by their HOAs, or lose their homes for unpaid property taxes or mortgages that spiral out of control; and people get cheated on, mistreated, ignored, marginalized, and divorced by their spouses.

Not everybody... but a pretty healthy chunk of them.

The truth is, the world is a very uncertain place. And when you hear that, usually you shiver and want to run back into the warmth of certainty. But just like in The Matrix, you realize that certainty isn't actually real; it's an illusion to blind you from reality.

The people who embrace uncertainty tend to lead better lives.

Okay, that's done it for me. Now Chase Amante is knocking at the door of the pantheon inhabited by Richard Dawkins, Steve Jobs, George Friedman and the like.

 

[Ryan]

Get a room

 

[Lover]

Chase,

My curiosity is killing me!

As far as I'm aware, you don't have any children from a former marriage (or at all). But if you had children from a marriage, and they asked about your and your wife's marriage, how do you imagine yourself telling them about it? How would you tell them this backstory about the two of you talking about marrying, and you were like "sure we can get married, let's make it small and quick. To me, it's a social contract after all"?

 

[Fuck This]

A 2018 update on this would be interesting.

The concept of "unmarriage" interests me as well. Small ceremony, but no State marriage license. Assets owned individually, taxes paid as single, with whatever dependants each brings to the union. Still call each other husband and wife and the wife takes the husband's name. Durable power of attorney for health care, and provisions in wills for surviving "spouse".

I think for a Long term Monogamous relationship to remain fulfilling, I want to make it clear 1)the door is open any time for you to leave. 2) if you do I will close it after, 3) I want to choose to be with you (and Vice Versa) every day versus feeling trapped by a social and legal contract. Thus we keep working on us and ourselves.

We can do a ceremony, and even rings, but if we decide it is over, then it is simply a matter of calling the movers.

 

[Chase]

@Ajay-

You don't need to go into vast details with children, unless they are older children. "Yeah, sure, we're married / were married. No, we don't have pictures of it... didn't take any. Here's one picture on our marriage license, actually." That's about it. At younger ages, children are basically just looking for reassurance they fit in socially (i.e., "My Mommy and Daddy are married, just like everyone else's"), and are not bastards / misfits / etc.

If they want a backstory, you just tell them "Your mother wanted to get married, and I thought she was a pretty great gal, so we did it." You don't need to go into your opinions on the institution of marriage... they're not terribly relevant to the backstory question.

If you have older children, and they wanted a deeper explanation of your thoughts on marriage, only thing is to be careful about anything that makes it sound like you are dismissing the relationship with their mother. "It's a social contract" sounds somewhat dismissive when talking about the actual relationship with a spouse. I'd go with more "Marriage is a contract between two people. It's primarily for the wife's protection." If they want more details, you can go into it. Just with care not to sound like you're dismissing the connection with the mother (if you devalue the mother, you also by extension devalue the child. They are half her, after all).


@Fuck This-

Yes, I think that's a good concept too.

I think the way I'd frame that is "I don't want the state involved in our marriage. If it's real, we don't need the state regulating us."

Which, really... there are arguments for why the state is involved in marriage. But there are plenty of arguments for why the state should have no role to play whatsoever in marriage, too. (if you opt for no state involvement, you probably ought to be versed in what those arguments are, both for your prospective wife and for outside critics)

The only real difficulty is going against the social tradition. You'll need to prime your wife not to gab to others about not being legally married, and make sure she understands the arguments for why not being legally married is superior. This protects her against ending up in social shaming situations where other people tell her her marriage setup is "all wrong" and she is being "taken advantage of" or that you are "selfish" or she is "unsafe." They will be primarily referring to the financial guarantee to the (probably non-working, or less working) wife from the husband that state-contracted marriage includes.

You also have less financial security for the wife in such a setup, so will need to look for other ways to make her feel secure. If she is, for instance, not working while raising your children, and all the income, earning potential, and assets are in your hands, that can make more paranoid women a little nuts. If she's super trusting she may be okay. Or if you're a super trustworthy guy she never has any doubts about, she may be okay. Otherwise, you will need to find some kind of way to reassure her that in the event of a marriage-ending event, she's not going to become a beggar as a result of her time with you.

Also keep an eye on state law, of course. Common law marriages are a thing in a lot of states. Spend enough time living together, referring to one another as husband and wife, with shared names, comingled assets, etc., and the state makes you a full legal husband and wife whether you want it or not. Need to be on the up-and-up about which states are friendly to your arrangement and which are not, if you want to avoid discovering the state has auto-married you.

Chase

 

[Fuck This]

@Fuck This-

Yes, I think that's a good concept too.

I think the way I'd frame that is "I don't want the state involved in our marriage. If it's real, we don't need the state regulating us."

Which, really... there are arguments for why the state is involved in marriage. But there are plenty of arguments for why the state should have no role to play whatsoever in marriage, too. (if you opt for no state involvement, you probably ought to be versed in what those arguments are, both for your prospective wife and for outside critics)

The only real difficulty is going against the social tradition. You'll need to prime your wife not to gab to others about not being legally married, and make sure she understands the arguments for why not being legally married is superior. This protects her against ending up in social shaming situations where other people tell her her marriage setup is "all wrong" and she is being "taken advantage of" or that you are "selfish" or she is "unsafe." They will be primarily referring to the financial guarantee to the (probably non-working, or less working) wife from the husband that state-contracted marriage includes.

You also have less financial security for the wife in such a setup, so will need to look for other ways to make her feel secure. If she is, for instance, not working while raising your children, and all the income, earning potential, and assets are in your hands, that can make more paranoid women a little nuts. If she's super trusting she may be okay. Or if you're a super trustworthy guy she never has any doubts about, she may be okay. Otherwise, you will need to find some kind of way to reassure her that in the event of a marriage-ending event, she's not going to become a beggar as a result of her time with you.

Also keep an eye on state law, of course. Common law marriages are a thing in a lot of states. Spend enough time living together, referring to one another as husband and wife, with shared names, comingled assets, etc., and the state makes you a full legal husband and wife whether you want it or not. Need to be on the up-and-up about which states are friendly to your arrangement and which are not, if you want to avoid discovering the state has auto-married you.

Chase

FYI
States That Recognize Common Law Marriage
Only a few states recognize common law marriages, and each has specific stipulations as to what relationships are included:

Alabama
Colorado
District of Columbia
Georgia (if created before 1/1/97)
Idaho (if created before 1/1/96)
Iowa
Kansas
Montana
New Hampshire (for inheritance purposes only)
Ohio (if created before 10/10/91)
Oklahoma (possibly only if created before 11/1/98. Oklahoma’s laws and court decisions may be in conflict about whether common law marriages formed in that state after 11/1/98 will be recognized.)
Pennsylvania (if created before 1/1/05)
Rhode Island
South Carolina
Texas
Utah

I'm looking at this from the perspective of two people who already have their own homes with older children and no desire to have children together. If anything the concern FOR marriage is spousal rights to inheritance and social security benefits. Without a marriage license, or specific durable power of attorney along with a living trust or will naming the partner, the Children would inherit all assets. So that footwork would need to be done to provide some "security".

Ironically we went to a wedding together last weekend. Had a great time and there wasn't much hint dropping.

 

[Lover]

Chase, I really appreciate your respons and this thread as a whole. As somebody that opposed marriage since age 13 because people could get divorced as well (you know, the irony of promising undying love, but you can take it all back - though I know I can't expect people to love each other forever), I could definitely see myself follow this path instead of the "no marriage at all"-path. I think what I really lacked in all those years until I read this post, was a framework. Thanks!

Cheers

 

[Fuck This]

Revisiting this once more with her BFF having visited this past weekend. I made the mistake of pointing out my neighbors place they rent out for big $$ as a wedding venue and the BFF says "you should see if they offer a neighbor discount". I replied I was "not in the market". The BFF replied "Wow not even a 'YET'" . I remained silent, although I was waiting for my GF to prod me as to what I meant.

If and when asked I'll reply with the "not opposed to a commitment, just don't want it to be a big deal and don't want the state involved."

If pushed to define when that TIME is, I'll define it as only a house mortgage as debt, positive cash flow, and $XX,XXX of liquid cash in savings with a fully funded retirement account. She will have her house rented out as passive income , a career or business with positive cash flow, and savings in retirement.