The Female Commitment Shift

I was again reading Why Men Are The Way They Are, and found this tidbit... perfectly illustrates what I fear in marriage.

Item: Trial marriage, the American Couples study found, differs from the institution of marriage in one major respect: "A woman who intends to quit her job will not do so until the marriage has occured."

Item: Forty-five percent of single women (vs. twenty-three percent of single men) live with their parents. For women, commitment often means going from their parents to a man. And should they break up with a man, their relationship with their man is ten times more likely to improve again.

Trial marriage means cohabitation of course. Its like marriage, but without the juicy "support me through sickness and health" part that makes it so appealing for women.

You know, this kind of stuff is why marriage is a raw deal for men. All the "EKWALITEEEEEE" screaming women banshees magically turn into house-dominating harridans upon marriage, quit their work and start eating bonbons while watching Oprah and shouting at her husband to finish working on the car so he can get to cleaning the gutters.

A man should be as afraid of marriage as a normal, everyday woman is afraid of being raped - the fear of being raped is cultivated, but the fear of marriage is discouraged. Men should take at least as many precautions against marriage as many women take against being raped.

Marriage is the rape of a man's wallet, bank account, retirement, of his life.

Dr. Farrell goes on...

Both of the above "items" reflect aspects of the "female commitment shift." They are perhaps best illustrated by Colette Dowling, author of The Cinderella Complex. Dowling recalls how when she made a commitment to a man by moving in with him, she "found herself" sliding from being a full-time professional writer who supported herself and her three children before moving into "letting" her new living partner become the sole supporter of her three children, herself and himself. He resented her shift. She recalls, "I hadn't anticipated the startling collapse of ambition that would occur as soon as I began sharing my home with a man again." and moreover, "I didn't even seem to be aware of the inequity."

Now imagine a woman telling her friend: "When we moved in together I supported him, his three children by another woman, and myself. I didn't even seem to be aware of the inequity."
It would be impossible for any woman to be unaware of the inequity of moving in with a man and immediately supporting him and his three children - without even a marital commitment. Impossible because the woman's mother, father, and women friends would let her know in no uncertain terms: "He's using you. Are you sure he really loves you?"

A man's commitment to a woman can mean her shifting from working out of necessity to working for fulfillment, thereby postponing his ability to make the shift himself.

If a man wants to commit to an independent woman with a blossoming career and believes he has found her, should he be fearful that once he commits she will become pregnant to avoid career anxiety? Dr. Ruth Molton, of Columbia University, and Judith Bardwick, author of The Psychology of Women, both suggest that he should. Even highly talented women, Moulton finds, "often become pregnant to avoid anxiety about their blossoming careers."

In what she calls the "pregnancy-to-avoid" syndrome, Bardwick explains that college-educated mothers complain about boredom and claim to want to return to work: however, "It's easy to talk, but difficult to face potential failure and loss of self-esteem. As their children grow older and the possibility of entering into a profession becomes a reality, their interest declines. The logical and salient mechanism for prohibiting entrance into the occupational world is an accidental pregnancy."

Also:

Men are much more likely to provide economically for women in marriage than in cohabitation. And women are 40 percent more likely than men to prefer marriage over cohabitation. Once married, though, both sexual quality and sexual frequency decrease.

As shown by Outcast Superstar's What Divorce Law is doing to Marriage series, divorce is not a cake walk. And marriage definitely isn't, as opening your eyes and looking around will tell you.

Don't marry. Its like going to Vegas and putting it all on red, except that if the ball ends up on black, you get thrown in prison, contract AIDS and everything you work for is snatched from you and given to your ex-wife. Oh, and if it ends up on red, you just become a slave for life.