Are marriage and kids worth it for men?

“Men occasionally stumble over the truth,

but most of them pick themselves up and hurry as if nothing happened.”

(Winston Churchill, former prime minister of Great Britain)

Similar to most men I would expect, as little a little boy I thought of nothing more than growing up in becoming a husband to a beautiful woman and a father to children I could be proud of.  This thought process takes a break as most men reach their late teens, as the adventure of alcohol, sex and further education take precedence over the fear of getting a girl up the duff.  However, once the mid 20s encroach, and male nights out are a rarity instead of the once norm, the full circle is fulfilled in harbouring ambitions to collide into a special woman who has the credentials to one day take your surname and bring up your kids. 

Although it may well be the case that near on none of your friend’s girlfriends, fiancés or wives would be your cup of tea, there does come a time when you start to become a little concerned that you are the last man in the group standing as a singleton.  You may well have a casual or serious girlfriend, but commitment to her seems a while off, if at all.  If you are completely single, and opportunities to meet women are starting to fragment, even a life seen with one of the reasonable looking female partners doesn’t appear so bad.  It beats loneliness, right?

A very small percentage of men, like me, take on a broader view of this general cycle of life.  Although dry spells with women for selective men are an inevitable consequence, there is an arrival of a bigger picture that derives from what you see and hear.  When nearly 2/3s of UK modern day marriages ultimate in divorce, and women initiate 70% of them, a man must question if the low odds are on his side.  When you see men with money troubles looking like a bulldog chewing a wasp, an outsider looking in can only wonder if it’s all worth it.  When you attend another wedding a year down the line from the last one, and you see a pronounced difference in reduced admirable physicality of all your friends female partners, you can’t help but think that sporadic and casual (but good) sex is a wiser option than banging the same woman whose fading beauty is now apparent.  

There are of course some advantages to getting married for a man, but I, like usual, look at it from a cynical viewpoint.  For me, the biggest advantage for a man to take the wedding day plunge, but more importantly to have kids, is when he is a man who is significantly boxing above his weight in the looks stakes.  Unless the man she is with has incredible wealth and social or occupational status, a woman with a far lesser looking man in relativity will always be on the lookout for a man more sexually appealing.  Sometimes this search mechanism may only be as far as visual temptations, but often she will submit to these uncontrollable urges inside.  I know this from first-hand experience – women coming onto me who recently married uninspiring men in aesthetic terms – as they are always left wondering how that better looking man would make them sexually feel.  But this hotter woman with indifferent visceral feelings towards her husband is a far less prized asset to other men once she is pregnant or a new mother.  And marriage by nature, and looks for most women once they reach the age of 25 (when they start to naturally decline physically anyway), tend to manifest in piling on the pounds to produce a less impressive beauty viewing.  The jealous uglier man, who always believed he could do no better, has now tied her down to an extent.

So for men who aren’t quite sure whether to deep dive or not, I lay on your plate some appetisers to digest: 

Male ageing

Make no mistake about it, marriage and fatherhood ages a man in a physical manner.  A man may think that running around with young children energizes him to the point of a new lease of life, but the waking to a baby crying in the middle of the night ahead of a long shift at work only speeds up the emerging wrinkles.  Gone is the gym, and the substitute is a widening waistline and saggy man breasts.  The financial pressures - that marriage and kids bring - only further compound a once fine looking specimen into a weary looking soldier.  If it all goes pear shaped with the wife as she departs simultaneous to blaming him that his best wasn’t enough, he has to start all over again to cast female eyes back onto him.

Money

As two incomes become one, with more to provide for, simple maths equate to less revenue and greater expenditure.  Modern day women are not too compassionate when purse strings need to be tightened, as many of them expect a man to simply work harder and acquire more promotions to pay for it all.  As for his indulged activities, well they are hard to justify now there is not much left at the end of the month.  The “do what I please” mentality for a man must change, and with a ring attached to his finger, the “my way or the highway” luxury, if it was ever there in the first place, is not such an easy fallback as it was pre marriage.  A woman sporting a marriage certificate holds far greater power in the relationship.

Time and experiences

Even if money is still of generous disposable level, there are no longer the luxuries to take young kids on long haul flights to see some of the most breathtaking sights in the world.  If he is accustomed to Saturday afternoon football matches with his mates, a woman now has a bargaining tool to say she holds desires to do something that same day.  Who looks after the son or daughter?  I stand by the opinion that a man must accomplish as many adventures as possible in his life before marriage and kids are the proposed steps.

Female diminished physical attractiveness

As touched on above, there are not many women who elevate their physical beauty post marriage.  It’s almost as if the accomplishment has been reached for her.  That is: look good to find a man, find him, get a ring on the finger and then lose the motivation to maintain her figure once the marriage certificate is signed.  Motherhood for women ages their look more than fatherhood does for men, because female physical evolution starts earlier and declines faster than the male likewise process. 

The only women I have known who do maintain their good looks post marriage are those who craved for the attention of a rock on the finger and a wedding day to show off to planet earth.  In other words, they were more interested in the status and flocking of viewers than they were about the man they were marrying per se.  In my humble opinion, this percentage of women is far higher than the claimed bare isolations.  Once there, a woman of this type will usually be found on ladies nights out only a few weeks after the wedding cake has gone stale.  She is already on the hunt for a better future male candidate.

Reduced and less enjoyable sex

I cannot comment, from first-hand experience, on how women physically and mentally feel about sex once they have birthed children.  What I do know from the mouths of close friends is that the passionate sessions are of isolated occasions after the midwife has performed her duties.  Again, a woman who was never totally aroused by a man now has more inclination to refuse sex once she is a wife.  Beforehand, she had to please him in order to get him down the aisle. 

A couple of questions must always be put to a man when contemplating the link between sex and commitment to a woman:

• First, is consistent but mundane sex more fruitful than infrequent but enjoyable sex?
• Second, during dry spells with women, is jerking off to porn – in looking at various physically stunning women of your choice – better or worse than remote sexual intercourse with a woman who barely turns you on?  Believe me, I know plenty of married men who cannot wait for a couple of business nights away so they can entertain themselves.

Power in relationships

Women, deny it as they will, feed off men in a positive fashion who stand up to them.  Women, deny it as they will, are turned on by a man who could walk away if his girlfriend is being a bitch and who could subsequently find another female taker at the drop of a hat.  Women, deny it as they will, respect men who say “no” to their demands and view relationships as empathy and not a concept to please her all the time.  Women, deny it as they will, like a man with a selfish mentality (within reason) who subconsciously brings about the challenge to chase and seek his love. 

Men succeed in this way because they are not committed to the respective woman.  They have far less to lose as the role of a boyfriend, and losing a woman is nothing more than a circumstance of life and a fresh opportunity.  Once marriage and kids are the new life for him, a man loses that easy tendency to act in all the ways as explained, because a relationship split in the eyes of a legal court will favour a woman in bleeding him dry of all he has.  Although a woman will still love and respect a man delivering in this way as a husband and father, her ego can now allow the mind to believe that she should be treated as a princess who can do no wrong.  If he doesn’t act in this passive manner, friends and family around are advising her to take him to the financial cleaners.

Ability to not be a work lapdog

The last point has nothing and everything to do with women.  I work for a boss who is not my kind of person.  As someone who likes to perform the role of schoolboy bully, he walks around shouting the odds with abundant obscenities.  He holds predilections to belittle people and exploit his own knowledge.  He’s not on his own, and I’ve worked with many other similar characters.  If I had the choice to spend a Friday night beer with him or an ugly woman of fallacy ideas, I’d pick the latter every time.

Marriage, but even more so kids, forces an average working guy to become a “yes man” to idiots of his kind.  Such is the need to hold down a pay cheque to support the family, men will close their mouths, bite their tongues and agree with clueless managers who they blatantly disagree with.  But guys like me, with nobody at home to answer to, can stand up to overweight and arrogant twats like him when the time suits.

In essence, marriage (without a pre-nuptial agreement) and kids to a regular man surrenders much of his power in life.  Freedom, independence, opinion, forth rightfulness, firmness, choices and options can often be a thing of the past once the papers are signed.  Women do not like my attitude on this subject, because by and large, women have far less to lose financially from marriage and kids than men do.  Women, protected by law, generally come out of a divorce no worse off economically.  They are usually far better off than before they met the man.  This is why they can be more relaxed about the growing possibility of it not working out.  Women will subscribe to words along the lines of marriage strengthening a love between two people, but if two people must become man and wife to reach this “pinnacle” emotion, I would argue it was never a strong enough love in the first place.

Nevertheless, whilst a broken down marriage is less of a risk financially to women than men, the ownership of children in a failed relationship from a female perspective is a far worst fate than the equivalent male spectrum.  Time is not on a woman’s side like it is for men – both from a physical attractiveness and an overall appeal to the opposite sex stance – and one wrong strike at an early age can leave her stranded in an ocean of very few male takers.  These male takers that are still swimming will be of likely low calibre, because men with options and confidence don’t want a woman with kids from previous endeavours. 

On the other hand, although the custody payments may sting a man’s wallet, the fatherhood label can be just as much a babe magnet wand as it can be a no zone entry for women looking on.