I had to go out of town recently for a dentist appointment as medical service providers are few and far between in the great stupid state of North Dakota. Since there was nobody in network in my town, and my previous dentist office hardly ever has an actual dentist on staff — just hygienists and one moron office manager— I had to drive three and a half hours to go to a new dentist for X-rays and a cleaning.
Yes, I had to stay over night in a hotel, rent a car, and drive halfway across a state just for a one hour appointment. It’s insane, I know.
But that’s nothing compared to a completely fucking insane billboard I saw while I was down there.
I was parked at a Wendy’s eating my actually not bad spicy chicken sandwich when I looked across the road and I saw a big yellow billboard for a jeweler in town advertisting payment plans for engagement rings for as long as 48 months.
What??? I almost dropped my sandwich in shock. Who the fuck is financing a diamond engagement ring for four years? Good Christ, most marriages don’t even last seven years. You might be getting divorced by the time you pay the damn thing off.
My mind was blown. I was utterly floored. Are people — “men” — actually doing this, I wondered. I couldn’t believe it. Then I began to think about the many, many imbecilic male slobs I’d encountered in my life. Slovenly creatures in backwards hats, flip flops, scruffy beards, cargo shorts, forearm tattoos, fast food afficionados, fantasy football betting, sports-enthused, vape-toking, video game playing, Monster Energy drink sipping Neanderthals — yes, I could totally see many of these specimens going “Hur dur, happy wife, happy life,” and walking into that jewelry store ready to sign up for basically car payments on a twinkling rock for their idiot girlfriends.
Am I the only one who sees how insanely stupid this is?
How dumb do you have to be to sign up for four long years of debt just for a rock? There are a million better things to spend money on in a new marriage than a piece of bling.
Dear men, stop doing this to yourselves. Seriously.
No woman who truly loves you and wants to be with you would want you to finance a rock for four years. Only a gold-digging Instagram thot who takes seflies at the gym in her booty shorts would demand that, not someone truly worthy of years of your sacrifice and financial hardship.
A worthy woman would want you to put that money toward a house, furniture, a car, baby things, or other practical purchases that really matter and help build the foundation for a successful marriage and family. Not a shiny stone.
An engagement ring is just a symbol. She didn’t win the fucking Super Bowl, gents. Buy her something modest and within your budget, and move the fuck on in life.
In fact, this makes for a good litmus test. The bigger the rock she expects, the bigger the undeserving asshole she likely is.
This simp epidemic has to stop. I mean, think about the underlying misandry of that billboard’s message. It reflects a societal expectation that men go out and financially fuck themselves royally as a traditional precursor to marriage.
Now imagine the message, but directed at women. Imagine that billboard was offering payment plans on appliances like washing machines, dishwashers, and dryers that women go buy so when they get married they can be good little stay at home housewives. Or imagine it was advertising payment plans on BOOB JOBS so hubby can have a nice set of flesh pillows to bury his face in after a hard day’s work. Imagine all the outrage at that.
Well, it’s the same thing with this silly and frankly asinine expectation that men burden themselves for years for a stupid rock.
Fuck. That.
I could see dropping like $5k on an engagement ring. Maybe even $10k if it’s within your budget. But only if you can pay that in cash and it’s not going to force you into indentured servitude for the length of a presidential term.
Marriage is tough enough without additional and unnecessary financial burdens. Why make it needlessly harder on yourself?
I wouldn’t care if it were Sydney Sweeney. I’d rather be single for life than finance a rock for ANYONE.
How do you find your missing half when you’re already perfect as is?
Made with Midjourney.
There’s this hilarious scene in Curb Your Enthusiasm where Larry is over a friend’s house eating dinner and he notices that the glass of water he’s drinking is unfiltered from the tap. This petty but not unimportant observation leads to his host being offended, and Larry (surprise, surprise) getting kicked out.
You just can’t win with people like Larry. You serve them a nice dinner in a nice apartment with good friends and fun conversation, and they’ll still find some unforgivable flaw in your presentation that crumbles the whole affair.
What does this have to do with the point of this article? Well, it would seem many women have essentially become a bunch of Larry Davids, while men are that distasteful unfiltered tap water. Except while Larry David remains cuddly and lovable despite his eccentricities and obsessions with behaviorial minutiae, this whole “men ain’t up to snuff” refrain we keep hearing is getting old and ugly and obnoxious, not to mention making women actually come off looking worse.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “American Women Are Giving Up On Marriage.” A title written as if it should be blasted by a bullhorn atop a castle wall and met with wailing and gnashing of teeth by sackcloth-wearing commoners in the streets below.
However, I think a more honest title would be what I wrote in the sub-title section above: “How do you find your missing half when you’re already perfect as is?”
These types of rah-rah-women articles pop up now and again like herpes sores, and like that STI, they ain’t ever going away. Nor should they. It’s good to be reminded that women are surpassing men and that men are falling woefully behind and that women are so clearly better and have tons of options and that men suck and blah, blah, blah. Afterall, women’s clear superiority may not be readily evident to us boorish and ignorant men with our thick skulls. We must be constantly reminded of women’s superiority and our unfiltered tap waterness lest our puny male brains forget. Frankly, I’d be disappointed if I didn’t see these articles constantly.
I’ll spare you the details of this latest update on the state of the Überfem. It’s your standard, “women are making more money and graduating with more degrees while the pool of men in similar economic positions is shrinking” celebrat — or, lament. Basically, we’re suffering from an epidemic of unworthy, unmarriagable male losers! Meanwhile, the number of elite world-beating boss babes has never been higher.
A 29-year-old woman says of house hunting and having kids:
“I’m financially self-sufficient enough to do these things myself,” said Vorlicek, a Boston-based accountant. “I’m willing to accept being single versus settling for someone who isn’t the right fit.”
Well, given the absurdly low-barrier to qualify for mortgage loans, virtually anyone is financially self-sufficient enough to “buy” a home if they have a job and a pulse, so I’m not sure how much of a flex that really is anymore.
But let’s examine the glaring contradiction in her statement. This lady is NOT okay with settling with a full-grown man who “isn’t the right fit.” Okay, fair enough. However, she IS okay with giving birth to a child, who could end up being any random personality, good or bad, and to whom she’ll be legally and physically responsible for, and unable to extricate herself from without severe difficulty.
I mean, at least with the man you can dump or divorce him and make him go away (eventually). A kid is kind of stuck in your life FOREVER. Or at least for 18 years.
I could be wrong, but what I’m picking up subtextually from this almost-thirty-lady is a pathological need for control. What kind of a person is incapable of managing the vagaries of an adult relationship, but feels they are finely suited for taking on the rearing of a child? Children as we know never present any difficulties whatsoever. They are houseplants, really. Stick them in the corner and just forget about them.
No, seriously, you’d have to be some kind of anti-social asshole control freak to actually think that.
This next lady was confronted with a simple directive from her mama bear: Get a boyfriend by Christmas. But she ran into complications:
Katie spent the first half of 2024 going on three or four dates a week with men she met on apps, such as Hinge and Bumble, in the hopes of finding a husband before turning 30. By the end of the year, she had ramped down the search, calling it “the only thing you can put 10,000 hours into and end up right where you started.”
[Bold-face above mine]
Three or four dates a week? For the first half of the year? Hmmm…let me break out the abacus for this one. Thirteen weeks…three or four a week. That adds up to anywhere between 39 to 52 dates in total.
Mind you, these are NOT just random men. These are the men that SHE chose from the vast sea of spermatozoa via the apps. These are the cream of the crop, no pun intended. Yet none measured up after a real-life meeting in the flesh? Seriously? None?
NOTE: If you can’t find an acceptable partner amongst a pool of prescreened applicants that YOU chose for fifty dates, most likely YOU are the problem, not them.
But no, let’s hear the cope:
Many of the men Katie met, she said, either seemed turned off by her ambition or weren’t career-oriented enough for her. She felt discouraged by just how many of her male friends similarly said they expect their future wives to prioritize their families over their jobs.
By the way, Katie’s big professional ambition is running Lume, a “leadership coaching startup” in NYC. I tried looking it up and the only companies I found with the name Lume were a cannabis dispensary in Michigan and some site that sells women’s deodorant. Since I’m sure Katie’s Lume is a highly lucrative elite consulting empire and surely not just a couple gals gabbing away in a rent-by-the-hour office somewhere, I’ll just assume this glaring oversight on Google’s part in not ranking it on the front page is due to sexism and misogyny.
This next young, er, middle-aged rather, lady, laments a failed relationship, saying:
“He wanted the white picket fence and me at home with the kids,” Jones said. This despite the fact that her salary was nearly 50% higher than his.
Jones is 38, and from her picture, bordering on obese. In other words, she likely has a narrow chance of becoming pregnant and carrying a child fully to term without luck or expensive IVF treatments anyway. So, I’m not sure where her former BF got off thinking she was going to be having kids anytime soon. I’d say that ship has sailed. And since we don’t know her salary, we don’t know how much more she makes than her ex-beau. But it’s not like she’d have to become a dreaded stay at home mom forever. Likely just for a few years until the kid is old enough to go to school on their own. Then she can return to work. Millions of women do this every year. It sounds like her former BF was just concerned that his child would have a committed parent there for him or her for the first few critical years of their life. I say good on him and hope he found someone better.
This next lady is 33 and has a five-year-old from an ex, but she frets she won’t be able to find anyone because:
She has yet to date anyone else in part because she worries about living in a red state with a six-week abortion ban. “I have a child that I can’t leave behind to drive to Virginia if I had a pregnancy scare, and I definitely can’t afford another child as a single mom,” she said.
LOL. Fucking LMAO.
In addition to the litany of criteria men must worry about qualifying for in a relationship, now we must contend with being rejected solely because some lady can’t run to the nearest kill-a-kiddo center in the offchance our rigorous premarital boning results in an unexpected pregnancy?
“Hey Bob, why’d your last girlfriend dump you?”
“Because Planned Parenthood was two states away!”
Imagine hearing that.
What kind of low lifes is this lady fucking? No, let me put it another way. Why would you be okay with fucking a guy but not okay with him babysitting your kid for a few hours while you dash across state lines for the ol’ vag vacu-suck? That’s essentially what she’s saying here. If he’s not responsible enough to babysit your kid, then maybe you shouldn’t be fucking him. Just a thought.
Here’s the deal. When you’re consistently presented with dozens of partner options; when you’re in your late 30s and you’ve sampled a buffet of male suitors for two decades; when you’ve been through college and had one opportunity after another to partner up; when you live in a fucking major city and you still can’t find a guy who “measures up,” it’s not because there aren’t quality guys. It’s because you’re a picky, unsatisfiable asshole. You’re a female Larry David. That is who you are. Only not funny. Not cuddly. And not lovable.
And to quote the hostess from that Curb scene, “I think you should leave.” Thank you.
Now, you would think with a cost that high that maybe only a handful of people would express interest. You’d be wrong again, as over 100 people applied. The service only plans to take on three people, however. Which means hypothetically — and this is for all you side hustlers out there — that you could TOTALLY take advantage of the remaining 97+ with your own million dollar dating scheme. That’s more than $97 million left on the table. Good luck.
Man, here I am thinking paying a dating app $50 a month for “Platinum Level” is outrageously egregious and akin to buying into an obvious pyramid scheme. Turns out I’m woefully underestimating the willingness some people have to burn cash for empty promises.
So, what do you get for a million bucks anyway? According to the service’s CEO, Adam Cohen-Aslatei:
Cohen-Aslatei described the service as a “one-year intensive dating program,” in which Three Day Rule manages practically every aspect of clients’ dating lives. The company assigns each client a dedicated recruiter, who flies across the country, visiting social clubs, bars and Equinox gyms in search of a match. Matchmakers plan dates in minute detail, and dating coaches prep clients and their matches for dates on everything from hairstyling to etiquette.
It sounds like Three Day Rule is basically a booking agent, like an actor would have. Only instead of hustling to get you a bit part on some shitty sitcom for union minimum, Three Day Rule is out there scouring the globe for a potential lifelong partner. Along the way they are coaching you to make you a better catch in the process.
Hmmm, I could be wrong, but if you’ve got a million bucks to throw around on something like this, I’d say there’s a good chance you’re already a high-value Type-A prospect anyway. People spending this kind of money don’t just have a few million. They are probaby multi-decamillionaires. They are in the top one percent of the one percent. How much better could you really get?
Also, Three Day Rule? That sounds a little too close to “Five Second Rule.” The maxim that says if you drop a cookie on the floor it’s still okay to eat it if you pick it up within five seconds. Might want to consider a name change there.
If you’re looking to be included into the pool of potential recruits for a shot to shack up with a millionaire, you better be ready at the airport. Cohen-Aslatei adds:
…we send our recruiters to airports around the country to sit at the gates going to the cities our clients are located in. And they strike up conversations, they get to know them, and then we decide they’re going to be palatable and the right type of a match for our client.
Just great. Now instead of only worrying about handsy TSA agents patting you down, assholes playing music loudly on their phones, flight delays, and overpaying for crappy food and beverages, you’ll have to contend with under cover Cupids possibly probing you as match for some rich dork who can’t be bothered to chat people up on their own. Nice.
Look, anyone who uses this service is stupid, obviously. But it raises questions about the ridiculous way in which we as a culture value and assess possible mates, and the oftentimes impossible standards we apply. No one wants to “settle” these days. Everyone wants to hold out for a “better deal.” This is largely due to social media and the infinite scroll of dating apps, which, like a viewing portal into a magical land, offer a fictitious glimpse of a better life with glamorous people. We’re beset with a paradox of choice, always thinking something better is just around the corner. The effect is people become disposable, useful only until the next “upgrade” is available.
Meanwhile, marriage rates and pregnancy rates continue to drop. All this apparent availability and choice haven’t made the process of finding love better. It’s made people crazy enough to actually try a service like this. If people are willing to pay this much for a chance at a partner, that to me is indicative that things today are truly desperate and broken.
Using this service is also hideously materialistic and soullessly calculative. As if you could buy a partner as you would a yacht or a personal jet. You could almost certainly do better attracting mates by simply getting a cute puppy and going for walks around your neighborhood. There are free dogs at the shelter up for adoption everyday. You could revamp your wardrobe for a few thousand. You could hit the gym and get into shape. You could take classes in-person at a local college. Or participate in expensive hobbies that other high networth people tend to be attracted to — private pilot lessons, going on luxury vacations, or golfing, for instance.
Let’s say you did happen to find a marriage partner using this service, but then you get divorced in two years. What then? That’s a pretty high price to pay just to have someone share your bed for 24 months. You could afford a high-end $1000 escort to fuck your brains out every weekend for nearly TWENTY YEARS for the same price, and you wouldn’t have to worry about losing half your shit in divorce court when your partner randomly decides things “aren’t working out for them” anymore.
Maybe money can’t buy you love. Or maybe it can. There are plenty of gold diggers out there willing to shack up with an uggo just to drive a Mercedes-Benz. But I do agree with the notion that the “best things in life are free.” While we as a society keep trying to monetize and systemize everything in sight, love will remain the one thing you can’t put a price tag on.
Society must deal with declining birth rates, low population, and the shocking lack of baseline domesticity of our species.
Teenagers at a party in Tulsa, Oklahoma 1947. Author unknown.
I have an ex-girlfriend who was borderline incompetent at most things in life.
That’s putting it as nicely as I can.
Her apartment was always a mess. I came over one Thursday night with groceries to make dinner. Her place looked like a bomb went off. I cleaned up the kitchen, then proceeded to make our meal. The following night I came over and her place was a disaster again. I’m talking plates with crumbs left on the floor by the sofa. Food wrappers left on the carpet. I had to clean up the kitchen again before making dinner for us both.
Her car was equally a disgrace, littered with papers, CDs, food wrappers, and other things.
She was a lazy slob who put ZERO effort into the relationship. She never came up with date ideas. Expressed no interest in having kids one day. Had no career ambitions. Couldn’t cook. Couldn’t clean, except when compelled. She constantly complained about part-time jobs she had. I think she got fired from one as a restaurant hostess.
She could, however, dress well. She looked nice. Put together. The only job she ever performed well at was as a model for a painter. A job that literally only required her to sit still and look pretty for an hour. That’s it.
Oh, and she was “pansexual,” or something that meant it took her a “long time to warm up to being physical with anyone.” Long time as in months or even years.
So, a prude. I love these modern made-up words about sexuality that describe basic human behavior that’s been around for thousands of years.
Unsurprisingly, our relationship did not last. I couldn’t stand to be with someone who seemed incapable of baseline adult functioning. She was also petulant and child-like in her attitude. I once took her to a college football game and she literally sat there and stewed the whole time. This was after enthusiastically agreeing to go. We left at halftime.
Now, possibly this lady was inadvertantly trained to be useless. She was the baby in her family, and her folks had money. So, there might have been some poor upbringing in there. But her older sister and brother were competent adults with jobs and families and drive. What the hell happend to her, I used to wonder, before finally breaking things off.
It wasn’t just that she couldn’t do most adult responsibilities. It was that she almost seemed proud to be deliberately helpless. It was a badge of honor. This is not a unique thing amongst many modern women I’ve observed, especially uber feminists. Domestic duties are somehow seen as beneath many of them. As if being able to do laundry and clean the kitchen is a betrayal of some feminist code or something. Yet such duties are common household functions. I do them all the time and I don’t feel “feminized.” It was just one of my chores growing up that I still use in my everyday behavior today. Because, you know, I like things being clean and not disgusting around me.
The oppressive, patriarchal 1950s we’ve all been told was a living nightmare for women. Photo from 1959. Author unknown.
Years ago I had a very good-looking friend. I mention he was very good-looking because I’m quite sure his attractiveness was the source of all his good fortune in life. He was a POS lazy ne’er do well, otherwise, and the kind of guy I tend to have contempt for. But he was a nice guy and had an easygoing personality. He had an attractive girlfriend who did EVERYTHING for him. She cooked, cleaned the house, managed his finances — giving him an “allowance” out of his own pay after deducting for expenses —all while holding down a full-time job. She also had a bachelor’s degree. They were an odd couple. She was a driven, capable professional. He was a former pot dealer who slept on his friend’s sofa before shacking up with Wonder Woman. There could not be a bigger contrast. Yet they were together.
It wasn’t all sunshine and roses. My good-looking friend confided to me one evening that he and his girlfriend hadn’t been intimate in a long time. I was surprised, kinda. I suppose it’s hard to fuck a guy — even a hot guy — when you’re practically his mother. They’re married today, however. A development I’d cynically say was probably due more to the sunk costs fallacy than some genuine deep connection they shared. Or maybe my bum ass ex-friend actually matured and started pulling his own weight for once in life.
He was also your typical gamer dude, capable of long hours in front of the big screen zoned out doing whatever-the-fuck. What is it with dudes and gaming nowadays? I played the original NES for a few years as a kid, but that was it. If I try to play a game now I start to go quietly insane. They’re so stupid and pointless. Yet guys in the their 30s and beyond will devote hours and hours to seeing if they can find a silly fucking sword or something for their character. I know guys with huge tattoos of their favorite game characters. That’s just weird to me. So many men are stupidly infantalized, desocialized, and underperforming these days. When you throw in ubiquitious pornography, and you might as well have most men plugged into a 24/7 morphone drip. We may not live in a bombed-out hellscape, but our society feels very dystopian these days.
As nice as my friend’s girlfriend was, honestly, I’d go crazy in a similar set-up myself. I don’t need a woman to baby me or run my life. I do just fine on my own. And the no sex deal…well, that’s a deal breaker, right there. Especially if we’re living together.
My point with all this is that men and women are not optimized for one another anymore. They are not optimized for a marriage or relationships in general. We are only optimized for our own individual needs, wants, and desires. We are like Baby People crying out for our bottles. There is only one word that exists in the collective unconscious — ME. Me, me, me.
Possibly — well, quite likely — this is the result of our ultra-individualist society. We are trained from birth to go through the school system, get an education, all so we can squeeze ourselves into some corporate Borg Cube. All while being hypnotized by the glowing rectangle of the computer/phone screen. Recently, I saw a post on X about how Gen Z women rank marriage as low as seventh on their list of priorities. Career and college were likely at the top.
I’ve mentioned before how in college when asked our future plans no one, not even the women, mentioned things like having a family or kids. Frankly, the very idea seems quaint and cringe or characterized as “traps” to anyone who isn’t a bonnet-wearing Mennonite or an immigrant from a region where having 5+ kids is basically a rite of passage. That’s honestly a shame, and narrows the reproductive window of opportunity. The women in my class were not in their teens, but mainly in their mid-20s. By contrast, my mom had me when she was 24. She had four kids. My grandmother started late relatively-speaking for her era, at 28, but she had 8 herself. Out of all my direct family, half-family, and former family, no one has had more than three kids, with most having none or one. And many of the women in my family had their kids after 30, which historically is pretty old to have a kid for the first time. I have none myself.
I don’t say of any this to shame or make fun. It’s just rather sad, and maybe more indicative of a restrictive and toxic economic climate than a statement on the broader culture. Or perhaps all our comfortable modern technology has lulled everyone into a numb ennui toward family and offspring. Who wants to change diapers when you could binge watch the latest Netflix slop? Why have actual kids when you could be a dog mom or a cat dad?
As in my two examples, even when relationships do miraculously occur, they can often be fake and unfulfilling as plastic flowers.
Whatever the reason for the divide, it seems men and women need some kind of New Deal. A restart. A reacclimation to one another. We put all this time and effort into training people to become monkeys for our corporate overlords. Why not add a School of Domesticity? Or at least pivot our cultural attitudes toward viewing genuine human connection as a natural positive, and not a punch line.
Men occupy a strange Twilight Zone social status nowadays. On the one hand, we’re constantly barraged by charges of “toxic masculinity” while also many of us are simultaneously called “incels.” We’re both useless but also needed to serve as providers. Family courts see men largely as cash cows. The vast majority of divorces and child custody hearings favor women, at least in financial terms. Sometimes the child(ren) must stay with the mom because they are are still physically dependent on her. But most times it’s simply because men make the most money, and are therefore target-rich environments to scheming lawyers.
We’re a polarized, hierarchy-divided species. We’re either Alpha Male Chads (a small minority) or low-grade beta simps (the majority). Most of us are considered “ugly” by women, at least if reports from some dating app research are to be believed.
We’re a relic of the patriarchal past. Yet it is men who largely perform all the sweaty blue-collar labor that keeps society running. Who’s driving all those big rigs across the highways? It’s like 85% men. Same with plumbers, electricians, oilfield workers, etc. We do most of the work that keeps civilization humming.
And yet, despite performing so many essential functions in society, many men remain invisible, single, and alone these days. Relegated to acting as background code in the matrix of the universe, as it were.
Perhaps there are too many of us. In centuries past, many young men were sent off to war, where they died in battle or from disease. Or men went off to sea, encountering a variety of lethal dangers. China infamously enacted a one child policy years ago that favored male offspring. Now the country has a glut of men and not enough women to meet balanced mating needs, leading to a population crisis.
Most men in the past had to endure a culling process of some kind that thinned the herd a bit. Not now. The draft ended in the 1970s and there hasn’t been a war in the West since that’s required calling up millions of soldiers. At least not yet.
Meanwhile, women have made strides toward “equality,” if one believes such a thing can exist between the sexes. Women make more money and occupy more positions of authority. The result on the mating market has been seismic. Women are more selective on who they commit to long-term, and more prone to just staying single. Many are happy to wait until their 30s and even beyond for “Mr. Right.”
This new choice dynamic has favored high-status men, while often leaving many average men in the dust. It’s become like an arms race between the top-shelf men and women, with few winners, and many staying single and alone. Birth rates have dropped hugely, and as a result native populations around the West have declined. Even when people do get married today, they have far fewer children than before. Often only one or two, which barely keeps up the replacement rate.
No one wants to see a return to bloody wars and deadly maritime activities that saw the demise of millions of men over the centuries. But given the intense competition many young men face in the dating world, perhaps it’s better they turn their attention to leveling up financially and professionally before trying secure a long-term partner.
Men often go into the modern dating market completely unprepared for its harsh demands. They waste their time shooting their shot into the void of dating apps. Or they chase after women who just aren’t into them. Then they despair when they don’t gain traction.
It’s a costly blunder with often a net negative outcome, this ruthless pursuit of women in youth. Imagine if all that early to mid-20s energy were directed toward business enterprises, collegiate excellence, gymmaxxing, networking, hobby procurement, or at the least a fierce dedication to one’s job or industry. Instead, hours and dollars are wasted on chasing the siren call of “true love.”
Much time is wasted on other pointless things, too, of course. Things like video games, porn, binge drinking, TV, Netflix, movie marathons, and more. But much of the aforementioned is in the “blowing off steam” category. Often done after work or as a way to relieve stress. Not necessarily intentional with the end goal being a lifelong commitment to another person, offspring, and major lifestyle changes.
Though I disagree with the Red Pill’s often corrosive, schizoidal, and cynical outlook toward life and women in general, I do tend to affirm a lot of its generic be-your-best-isms and level-upping maxims for men. Men tend to do best when grouped in strict and clearly defined roles while directed by a forceful leader or “coach.” This is why men thrive on sports teams, military units, business squads, and other places that foster a brotherhood. The Red Pill sort of approximates this tribal dynamic.
You have to remember that most men today grew up with either absentee fathers or a limited fatherly presence, often while being raised by a single mother or by a dominant mother. All while going to school with most likely mainly female teachers. Women can complain all they want about men “sucking” today, but women by and large raised the current generation of men. So who’s to blame?
Anyway, back to the pursuit of marriage. Personally, I feel as a man that there are two best scenarios when it comes finding a partner. The most ideal is you find someone in your youth and stay together for life. I think it’s a shame that few people today have the opportunity, or even look for the chance, to find someone when they are really young. Instead they spurn that by screwing around, only to find themselves alone going into the dark early years of adulthood. Young love is the best kind, though it’s often not taken seriously. Granted, it’s rare for most people anymore. How many people meet their significant other in high school? Very few. I’m not embarassed to admit that as a teen I was a naive romantic myself, often dreaming of finding “the one.” Of course, like many male teens during that age period, I was a hot mess. I had neither the maturity nor means to manage such a situation. Nor was I ever seriously “in the game” to begin with, if we’re being honest. I never even had dates for the proms. But for those few who are and who find the right person, I say go for it.
The next ideal avenue is the ol’ seek your fame and fortune first before seriously seeking a mate option. This is actually the course many women choose today, though economics and the intense individualism of Western culture often forces the “choice” upon them. Often they forego marriage, children, even relationships in general, in favor of career and college. That leaves them with a much narrower reproductive window of opportunity.
But what is the alternative for women? Abandon their own careers for average schmucks who barely make $50,000 a year to be stay-at-homes with three and four kids? With today’s inflation? You can see the dilemma. Unless the guy is a real prize, he’s probably not worth lowering the drawbridge. Unless he’s just a rent-a-dick for the night.
I can’t speak to what women should or shouldn’t do, as I’m not a woman. But I think if you’re a man today the second option —become the best prize you can be — is the only practical route for most, really, as it provides the most optionality. Men may not go through a war or sea gauntlet today, but perhaps they need some kind of proving ordeal. Not in some fairy-tale-win-the-princess sense. But in a becoming a responsible adult person capable of dealing with the shit life throws at you sense.
The ugly alternative is this current “bottlenecking” of the mating market. I suspect my proposed male recession from the dating scene is actually already occurring. Except instead of self-improvement and leveling up, many men are regressing into an infantile state, playing video games, or substituting porn for human intimacy. Perhaps a gradual dawdling away into oblivion via mindless entertainment and distraction is the new war and sea gene filtering mechanism. Evolution does not seek sit-arounders, edible munchers, chronic masturbators, and button-mashers, but men with a plan. Heroes not zeroes.
Every once in a while I’ll encounter these weepy profile pieces on middle-aged women who have allegedly “seen the light” about how feminism tricked them/destroyed their life/whatever, and how they now just want a nice, “traditional” life with a husband and family.
Recently, this article from the New York Post has been making the rounds in certain communities on X about a 38-year-old woman named Melissa Persling who feels “betrayed” by feminism. In an article she wrote in Business Insider, she confessed:
“I’m 38 and single, and I recently realized I want a child. I’m terrified I’ve missed my opportunity.”
Shortly after publishing, Ms. Persling suddenly had an epiphany about some guy she had friendzoned a year earlier. Now this guy is magically “the one” and in fact someone “God has been preparing” for her. Now the two are together, thinking about the future. She can’t wait to have a traditional life, even if that means not putting on “heels” and going to “fancy dinners.”
I’m happy the lady has seemingly found happines. But I’m not buying her bullshit. In fact, there are so many red flags here it’s hard to know where to begin.
For starters, Ms. Persling was married at 22 for eight years to a nice, small town Christian guy, before getting divorced at 30. But back then she was firm about not wanting children, and by her own admission, treated the guy with disdain. After her divorce:
“I told my friends and family I’d never get married again. I needed independence, a fulfilling career, and space to chart my own course, and I didn’t think marriage fit into that vision. I was content to look toward a future without a husband, children, or the trappings of a ‘traditional’ life,’” she wrote.
But as age 40 approached real terror set in, and Ms. Persling became afraid that she’d end up alone forever. Now she’s a born-again traditionalist.
Sorry, I have no sympathy for people who were basically gifted everything, and then decided to throw it all away because it somehow wasn’t good enough. All while treating the people who gifted her stuff like shit.
Ms. Persling goes on to say how she had a lot of self-discovery to work through, including “previous trauma” about her parent’s divorce.
“I grew up in a fairly traditional family, but my parents were divorced. And I would say that probably had some effect on my feelings about having a family coming from a broken home certainly has its hardships,”
And yet, this alleged “trauma” didn’t prevent her from marrying a guy for 8 years. However, I blame the guy for wasting all that time with her. If you’re a man who wants children and a family, don’t waste your life on someone who’s firmly against all that. Far too many men these days are far too indulgent and nice toward women who are selfish assholes. I mean, pussy is good and all, but at a certain point you’ve got to put your foot down and commit to your values.
Ms. Persling adds:
“I feel unbelievably betrayed by feminism, and I don’t want to put it on the movement [entirely] because I believe you make your own choices… But I was constantly fed this idea that women can do everything. We don’t really need men… I kind of want to go back to some of those teachers and coaches and say, ‘What did you mean by that? Because we can’t do it all.’”
The hysterical emotionally charged phrasing of “unbelievably betrayed” makes me suspicious right away. It’s too melodramatic. It’s too performative and “damsel in distress.” This isn’t about declaring some genuine internal change. This is attention-seeking behavior rubbing against the grain of feminism because that’s what will generate clicks and engagement. Anti-feminists are all the rage on YouTube and X now. Melonie Mac, for instance. They’re weird types. Often tattooed, masculine, swearing like truckers all while professing Christianity and traditionalism.
Ms. Persling is exactly the kind of toxic personality men should avoid. These 30-something born again Jesus-loving ephiphany-havers are sadly a common type. I used to see them all the time on dating apps. It’s practically a cliche, and almost always indicative of a troubled past and severe baggage that some nice sucker will soon be expected to handle. There was one profile I saw of a 33-year-old who declared in her profile that, “You would be expected to help me walk in the faith.” Madam, I don’t even know you and you’re telling me I’m partly responsible for your eternal soul?
It’s not that I don’t believe people can really change. It’s that I think a lot of women like this have just found a way to repackage their troubled, sloppy selves to make them more enticing to suckers. Rebaiting their hooks, so to speak.
I do applaud Ms. Persling on her personal development. I wish her all the best. Seriously. But she’s a good reminder for why a lot of good men decide to just stay single.
It’s awful to say, but there have been so many shootings over the last twenty-some years that it’s hard to keep track of them. They all seem to sadly blend together into one tragic ongoing blur.
There have been what I’d call “milestone shootings,” at least to me. Ones that really stand out. The Columbine High School Massacre on April 20, 1999, is the most memorable, and arguably one of the most impactful. I was in high school myself at the time, so naturally it hit home. In fact, earlier that year, a friend of mine had brought in his bow and arrows (minus the arrow heads) for a class presentation where we had to talk about our hobbies. Something he likely would have been arrested for doing just a few weeks later.
Then there’s the 2009 Collier Township shooting that took place at a Pittsburgh-area LA Fitness. Committed by lone nutjob George Sodini, who shot up a workout class filled with mainly middle-aged women, shooting nine, killing three, before putting a bullet in his head.
I remember this shooting particularly because of Sodini’s bizarre and disturbing online ramblings about his frustrations with women as the apparent source of his rage that led to his murderous actions. Here’s what he said in his blog from a December 24, 2008 posting, as sourced by ABC News:
Moving into Christmas again. No girlfriend since 1984, last Christmas with Pam was in 1983. Who knows why. I am not ugly or too weird. No sex since July 1990 either (I was 29). No — — ! Over eighteen years ago. And did it maybe only 50–75 times in my life.
Later on December 29th, he writes:
I actually look good. I dress good, am clean-shaven, bathe, touch of cologne — yet 30 million women rejected me — over an 18 or 25-year period. That is how I see it. Thirty million is my rough guesstimate of how many desirable single women there are. A man needs a woman for confidence.
At the time, Sodini was a systems analyst working at a law firm, with a net worth of about $225,000. An amount which in today’s dollars would be around $325,000. He had a lot of spare time to travel. He mentions in his blog about taking a trip to Los Angeles, and having several weeks off a year. He had by all accounts a successful career and a decent amount of money for his age (48). He lived in a densely populated area. This was a year after the 2008 Wall Street crash, when the tech industry was beginning its parabolic growth trajectory that would see companies like Apple reach trillion dollar valuations. He was in a high-end sector with lots of opportunities for meeting people.
Made with Midjourney by the author.
So why all the questionable failures with women? Why the isolation and loneliness? How could a guy go almost 25 years without a girlfriend? Almost twenty years without sex? I remember being equally disturbed and perplexed by this case. And thinking to myself, had this guy never heard of the brothels in Nevada? Had he not heard of escorts? Or places like Bangkok or Amsterdam? For a guy who’s hard up there’s all kinds of ways of finding release. Sex is easy to find. It’s love and quality relationships that are the needles in a haystack. For a guy with money like him there’s always sugar daddying, too. And there’s the traditional routes for meeting people. Churches and bars.
Of course, being married or in a long-term cohabitation doesn’t equal having a good relationship. Most marriages are teetering on collapse, while half ultimately do. Divorce court is filled with the bitter ends of what might have started as a fairy tale. Only the rarest couples seem destined for each other and stick it out for a lifetime. And good for them. The dark reality is the majority of relationships are business decisions with an unknown ticking clock until the unraveling.
I remember this shooting later being used as one of the first examples of “incel” rage and violence. Retroactively used as some kind of harbinger that was to come. A precurser to the much-needed “reckoning” during #MeToo, and the growing chasm between men and women seen now during this Red Pill phase. But is it really? As tempting as it is to accept the incel angle, I’ve never really bought it. A guy might go crazy and go on a rampage over being rejected by a particular woman, sure. Especially if it’s to a hated rival. People have done all kinds of insane things over jealousy. But to go on a rampage over not being married or accepted by women in general just seems a stretch. Especially in recent times, with marriage itself increasingly falling out of favor. This guy was not some knight in the Middle Ages owed a fair maiden for slaying a dragon. He was a computer dude in 2009, a time when you could ring up a blowjob for $150 off Backpage.com.
Sodini adds this in another entry dated December 31, 2008:
My dad never (not once) talked to me or asked about my life’s details and tell me what he knew. He was just a useless sperm doner. Don’t know why, find it fun talking to young kids when I visit someone.
As someone who did not have the opportunity to know his real father while growing up, I can understand the frustration, the anger, the sense of loss, and the humiliation. It’s very demoralizing, and can lead to a catastrophic loss of personal confidence and sense of identity during crucial developmental years. I don’t think modern society really gets that. I think society views men as interchangeable cogs. Widgets without feeling that need to be inserted into place to keep the machinery going. Cannon fodder. It’s even worse the farther down you go on the socioeconomic scale. Most people don’t even realize that most mass shootings take place in the inner city, and are committed by black teens shooting other black teens. Mass shootings committed by white gunmen, while obviously tragic, are actually rare, statistically speaking.
Is that to say that if Sodini had had a better relationship with daddy he would not have turned psycho and brutally gunned down three innocent women? I don’t think it’s that simple. But Sodini was certainly someone who felt disconnected and estranged from society. Caught in a feedback loop of negativity and failure with relationships. Lacking guidance. Point is, Sodini was likely damaged goods from youth, who was set adrift on a river of loneliness and never changed course. For most people they try different things until something swings their way. They try speed dating, hit the dating app lottery, go overseas, or give up altogether on love and just start a hobby or get a pet. They don’t kill. But then for some the frustration builds up with interest over a lifetime, until something snaps. And they do kill.
The LA Fitness shooting is a haunting one because on the surface it feels like Sodini had options. He had good money, a decent job, was physically fit, and seemed self-aware enough to understand his needs. But Sodini felt entitled to a life he did not have, and felt he never could. Who goes around thinking “30 million women” rejected them? That’s a hell of a lot of baggage to be carrying on your shoulders. It’s also ridiculous. Everyone has admirers. Even the Elephant Man.
But ultimately, Sodini hated women, and he hated himself. And unfortunately, there’s not really a cure for that kind of sickness and self-loathing.
Over the course of 13 years, Jeffrey Dahmer, also known as the “Milwaukee Cannibal,” killed 17 people. He targeted mainly young men, finding them in bathhouses, and luring them back to his house, where he would drug, rape, and murder them.
Hey, what else are you going to do for kicks living in Wisconsin, right?
Sometimes, if Jeffrey was feeling in need of further stimulation, he’d disembowel them, too. He was also a necrophiliac, and liked to preserve the body parts of his victims. When he was finally caught by police in 1991, he was in the process of building a throne made of human skulls.
Wow, that’s pretty creative, to be honest. I can’t even put together a 100-piece puzzle without having a mental breakdown, and this guy’s over here building Skeletor’s throne.
But even Jeffrey Dahmer, human plague that he was, can’t hold a candle to something far more horrifying —
The institution of marriage.
Marriage, in sharp contrast to the creepy bespectacled image of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, is often portrayed as a blissful union between two people who love each other, want to spend the rest of their lives together, and may even want to raise children together.
In reality, marriage is responsible for untold misery, death, and destruction, especially when it leads to divorce/separation (which is often).
So, what’s riskier: Getting hitched, or living next door to Jeffrey Dahmer?
Jeffrey committed some of his murders while living in his grandmother’s house in West Allis, Wisconsin. However, while Jeffrey killed hitchhikers and gay men in bathhouses, it’s very important to note that he never killed anyone living right next door to him. He never even killed his own grandmother, who finally asked him to move out due to the “funny smells” coming from the basement of her house.
Thesis: I contend that marriage is by far riskier and deadlier than living next door to Jeffrey Dahmer.
Don’t believe me? Well, let’s take a look at some alarming statistics about murder and marriage.
According to The Atlantic, which reported a study by the CDC, 55% of murders of American women are committed by an “intimate partner,” meaning a former or current romantic partner, or the partner’s family or friends.
Source: Huffington Post
The study goes on to report some more disturbing facts:
A third of the time an argument precipitated the murder, with 12% of the deaths associated with jealousy.
15% of the women killed were actually pregnant at the time of death.
And almost half the murders were committed with a gun.
It gets even worse. Back in 2019, the Huffington Post, citing a study by Northeastern University, reported that domestic violence murders are on the rise.
In 2014, there were 1875 people killed by an intimate partner.
In 2017, that number rose to 2,237, almost a 20% increase.
Then there’s this startling little nugget:
“Every 16 hours, according to one estimate, a woman is fatally shot by her boyfriend, husband or ex.”
17 boys and men were murdered, often quite gruesomly.
Most of Jeffrey’s victims were non-white, including a 13-year old Laotian boy.
Now, let’s consider a few points.
According to Legal Jobs, the average length of a marriage in the U.S. is only 8.2 years. That’s almost five years less than Jeffrey’s serial killing enterprise, which shows that unlike all these short-timer married folks, Mr. Dahmer possessed a capability for long-term committment. Had Jeffrey not been caught in 1991, he’d likely have just kept on killing. And why not? The dude was clearly awesome at it. Whereas it appears most people are looking to bail on their marriages A.S.A.P.
‘Till death due us part? LOL, yeah right. What a sick joke.
It’s a sad testament to today’s society when a serial killer like Jeffrey Dahmer is a greater model of reliability and dedication than the institution of marriage itself.
Furthermore, unlike with marriage, Jeffrey was a danger exclusively to males. If you’re female, he was as harmless as a Lifetime movie, though certainly far more entertaining.
Now, factoring in some of the above-mentioned statistics concerning intimate partner homocides, if on average 2,000 women are killed every year by their SOs, while about 2 million women are married every year, that means a woman has roughly a one tenth of one percent chance of being murdered by marriage.
Mind you, she plays those odds every year she stays married. Hmm, maybe there is something to that 8.2 year average divorce deadline, afterall.
Only about 5% of murdered men are offed by their romantic partners. In fact, about 500-750 married men are whacked each year. That works out to under three hundredths of one percent of men married each year being killed by a spouse.
Now, those numbers may look pitifully low. But they are orders of magnitude higher than Jeffrey’s body count. Jeffrey only killed 17 guys over a 13-year period. In that same period of time, marriage might have killed almost 26,000 people. Roughly the population of Neenah, Wisconsin, a small town 84 miles from Jeffrey’s birthplace of Milwaukee, and famous for making manhole covers.
Now, let’s a break from all the murder and mayhem, and discuss something far more important.
Man, marriage can end up being a pretty big blow to one’s net worth.
But you know who never reduced anyone’s federal income tax bracket? Good ol’ “Kill ’em cheap” Jeffrey Dahmer, that’s who. A budget-minded serial killer, who often plied his victims with offers of free food and drinks to lure them back to his apartment.
This adds up to a pretty disturbing truth: Strictly financially speaking, it’s not only cheaper, but likely more profitable, to be killed by Jeffrey Dahmer, than to end up in a bad marriage, or one that leads to divorce. At least with Jeffrey you get treated to a good meal and (possibly) mindblowing sex before your visit with the Grim Reaper. Which is more than what many can say about their failed marriages, much less the dating scene itself overall.
Certainly, it’s safer (and healthier) to be Jeffrey’s next door neighbor than to be a divorcee, no matter what your gender. A study that appeared in Annals of Behavioral Medicine showed divorce linked to a “wide range of poor health outcomes, including early death.”
Meanwhile, Jeffrey’s grandmother, Catherine Jemima Hughes, whom he lived with during his first three murders, lasted to the the ripe old age of 88, dying on Christmas Day in 1992.
And this leads to a realization that really rocked my world —
It’s possible that actually being married to Jeffrey Dahmer might have been the safer option, rather than being married to some other random person. Jeffrey never killed anyone he lived with, or next to, remember.
Married folks, let me emphasize that: Statistically, you would have been safer being married to Jeffrey Dahmer than to your current husband/wife.
Finally, we get to the issue of race. As mentioned earlier, Jeffreys victims were primarily non-white. Many of these melanin-enriched unfortunates were picked up in gay bars and clubs. Which goes to show that Jeffrey, for all his shortcomings, was definitely not a racist. Or a homophobe.
The institution of marriage on the other hand? It’s practically wearing a pointy white hood.
Even though, according to Gallup, U.S. approval of interracial marriage has hit a new high of 94%, Wikipedia points out that, “White Americans were statistically the least likely to wed interracially.” Even very recently, according to Pew Research, only 19% of newlyweds in 2019 were interracial couples.
Source: Pew Research Center
By contrast, Jeffrey judged not by the color of his victim’s skin, but whether they’d make a fine addition to his skull throne. His body count was a color-blind meritocracy, just as Dr. King would have wanted. Given Jeffrey’s racial preferences, you could even say he was a devout anti-racist before it was cool to be a devout anti-racist.
The results are clear: Jeffrey Dahmer wins this debate pretty handidly. You would have been statistically safer living next door to him during his killing spree than you would have been getting married.
A quick recap:
If you’re a woman, you have a low but not insignificant chance of being murdered by your partner. But you would have had a ZERO chance whatsoever of falling prey to Jeffrey Dahmer, even if you were living with him. Or married to him.
Point goes to Jeffrey for his chivalry.
If you’re a man, you also have a greater chance of being killed by your spouse or partner than ending up part of Dahmer’s body part trophy collection.
Another point to Jeffrey.
For either sex, marriage can lead to breaking the bank. Death by Dahmer? Zero out of pocket costs. And you might even get a free dinner and drinks.
Jeffrey scores again.
Marriage itself? Sadly, still an institution rife with racism and homophobia. Meanwhile, Dahmer was all about diversity and cultural enrichment.
Jeffrey with the clincher here.
And there you have it. Jeffrey Dahmer wins out on virtually every metric that matters. You’re better off living next door to a serial killer than getting married.
As a lifelong bachelor who’s never had more than a passing interest in getting married, sometimes I like to take a moment to examine the institution from an outsider’s perspective.
It’s not that I don’t like or trust the concept of marriage. I’m not some cynical, jaded, red pill doomer/MGTOW misanthrope. Having seen my share of “manosphere” content on YouTube, my overall assessment is it’s like most gangsta rap. Hilarious subverse, fun to listen to, but not exactly meaningful or useful for leading a productive life. Most of the so-called “unplugged” red pillers are really nothing more than just unlikable a-holes with too much money and/or time on their hands.
Yet, many of them do make very valid points in their suspicions toward the institution of marriage. It’s a coin flip. A 50% chance you might lose half your possessions (or more) in a divorce. Who wants to take 50/50 odds their parachute won’t open after they jump out of a plane? You’ve heard all the analogies and seen all the statistics before, I’m sure.
On principle, marriage is a good idea. If it represents a genuine committment and a good faith promise from parties not to screw each other over in the event of a separation. Looked at from a financial and tax perspective, there are many benefits. Given how many Millennials (who are now in the thick of their getting hitched years given their age group) are supposedly broke/unemployed/in debt/under employed/not fulfilling their economic potential, it would seem getting married makes all kinds of sense financially. Two people to share onerous rent or mortgage payments, furniture costs, Netflix subscription fees, etc. Yet, marriage rates globally continue to decline.
Independent demographer He Yafu said young Chinese women were changing their view of marriage and parenting.
“As their education and economic independence levels increase, the percentage of women who are single is increasing,” He said.
Women becoming more independent and self-sufficient as a cause for declining marriage rates is not unique to China, of course. In all my searches, I found that to be a common theme. It’s certainly a cause here in the West, in the U.S. and Canada, and elsewhere. It’s here that a red piller might posit that feminism will “destroy civilization,” as it reduces women’s interest in having committed relationships during their peak fertile windows, leading to fewer births, leading to governments having to allow for laxxer immigration policies to prop up the tax base, leading to the dissolution of unified national identity, leading to globalization, and ultimately leadings to pods, bugs, fake meat, and mandatory soy injections in the dick, or something.
By the way, if all that does happen, I’ll be happy to admit I was wrong to doubt the red pillers and for not buying a MGTOW coaching session for $20 a minute so I can be told what a loser I am for not being a millionaire supermodel pussy slayer by age 25.
Going back to China, marriage rates have dropped to their lowest rate since 1986, when statistics first started being recorded. Naturally, China’s infamous one-child policy, which favored males, gets part of the blame. And rightly so. Now China has a demographic time bomb going off with excess men, and not enough women to go around as wives. Imagine a whole nation of incels. Actually, you don’t have to. That’s pretty much everywhere now.
However, while China’s lopsided male/female ratio may be unique on the national scale, it’s not necessarily so at the local level, depending on where you live. I currently live in Western North Dakota, having moved here for the oil boom many years back. It’s not as bad now, but certainly back during the heyday of the boom, there were far greater numbers of men than women. And what few women there were, were often already attached, had children, or were not exactly in the dating pool. Western North Dakota is the place where relationships go to die, I like to joke with friends and family. Strangely, it is also the place where your bank account and networth go to live. Can’t have it all, I guess.
That South China Morning Post article also blames the COVID-19 pandemic, as it forced so many young, potentially marriageable people indoors, where they couldn’t have gone on a coffee date even if they had wanted to.
I think if anything the pandemic acted an accelerant on an already growing societal trend, though it doesn’t really get at a big underlying cause: technology. Social media, in particular, which has a way of dehumanizing people. Even good people. This is true whether we’re talking Twitter, Facebook, or popular dating apps like PlentyofTrash and OkStupid. Most dating apps create a sort of digital China experience, in which the men vastly outnumber the women. Women are often inundated with messages from thirsty dudes, while most dudes are left shooting their shot into the void with not much to show for it. That’s not to say dating apps are pointless. I’ve had some anecdotal success with them, even while living on Mars, as I do, and not being some chiseled Adonis. However, I’ve found far more success when I actually go out, and put myself in the right social situations, as I’m sure most people have also experienced. I’d never want to rely solely on dating apps ever, though. That’d be like having to rely on Burger King for every meal.
So, China blames women becoming more independent and delaying marriage, or putting it off altogether, the nation’s disastrous one-child policy that led to too many boys, and COVID-19. I think you also see these reasons playing out in the West, but sometimes in a more localized way. For instance, even in big cities, where the male/female ratio is more balanced, either sex will still complain about a lack of suitable mates. Women may complain that there are too few high status guys who match their income or higher. While many guys who don’t feel they can compete in the dating market anyway (or just don’t want the hassle, period) may simply opt out in favor of video games, movies, or internet porn.
Overall, the falling marriage rate is an alarming trend. But I think it says more about how people today are failing to connect with one another in a meaningful way rather than anything about the failure of the institution itself. Marriage has been around for thousand sof years, afterall, and will continue into the future.
But hey, maybe we’ll all have better luck in the Metaverse. 🙂
Dean Brooks 