Weddings Mean Nothing – Here’s How To Prove It
There’s a very interesting article right here about the percentages of newlyweds unsure about the wedding and whether this correlates to the four year divorce rate, which is the first big spike among divorces, statistically speaking.
The four year mark is about right, since as I’ve said many times “serious” monogamy has, on average, a three year lifespan before the relationship begins to deteriorate either sexually, emotionally, or both. The shit starts to hit the fan at the three-year mark or before, and it takes an additional year for things to get bad enough to warrant a divorce. Hence your four year divorce spike.
Of course this only represents people who get divorced at four years. Many others get divorced at around the seven year mark (the famous “seven year itch”), the ten year mark, the sixteen year mark, and the “when the last kid moves out” mark. And of course many other couples get divorced well before four years, particularly those dumb enough to get married under the age 25.
The results of the surveys referenced in the article are interesting. They’re also full of a lot of bullshit. Let me explain why.
The article makes reference to another survey that states 60% to 70% of married couples “considered themselves happy in their marriage” after four years. The problem is the only other option was “not satisfied”, and “satisfied” does not equal “happy”. That’s exactly the problem with a lot of these damn surveys, but I’m going to address the reason behind the results of the primary survey in the article instead.
If you want a clear demonstration about how women are really all about serial monogamy rather than eternal monogamy, you should do the “Five Engaged Women Experiment”. This is the female version of the Five Married Guys Experiment I’ve talked about before.
I’ve done the Five Engaged Women Experiment more than once, every time with predicable results. You should give it a shot next time you start feeling thoughts like “monogamy just might work” or “marriage really is the best way to go if you want kids”. The experiment takes a little time, but doesn’t require you to do anything difficult or unethical.
The Five Engaged Girls Experiment
Here’s how you do it:
1. Find five women who are engaged to be married. The only requirement is that a) they really are engaged and b) they’re under the age of 50. There must also be at least some reasonable amount of trust the woman has for you, in that she knows you will keep secrets and/or she knows you don’t know her fiancĂ©Â at all.
2. Have a private conversation with each woman. Emphasis on private. None of her friends can be anywhere nearby during the discussion, nor anyone in her family, nor any men, and certainly not her fiancé. Just you and her, or as close to just you and her as you can get.
3. Like with the Five Married Guys Experiment, you could introduce a little alcohol into the situation to ensure you get truthful answers, but in my experience you don’t really need it. (Note I said a little alcohol. You don’t want her drunk. You just want her truthful.)
4. Get her calm and relaxed.
5. Once she’s chill, ask her in a calm, curious, non-accusatory tone, “Do you literally plan on being with him for the rest of your life? As in, no one else but him for literally the next 45 years?”
6. If she gives you an answer that is in any way negative, immediately skip to step 9. This is unlikely however. More likely, she’ll respond with a jerk reaction of societal programming like “What?? Of course I do!!!”. Then ask her, “I know that’s what you feel right now. But do you really think that’s actually what you’re going to do for the next 45 years straight?”
7. If she hems and haws and/or refuses to give you a straight answer, press for a real answer. That means you’re getting closer to the truth, and I’ll give you some examples of these kinds of answers in a minute. If she instead adamantly says “Of course I will! Yes!”, ask her if she’s really sure about one or two more times. (No more than two. Don’t be a pestering asshole. Plus pestering too hard will damage the outcome of the experiment. Be strong, tough and persistent, but don’t pester.)
8. If she still answers with a clear, “Yes, we are going to be together for the next 45 years, and I will never touch another man. That’s exactly what’s going to happen,” then log her answer in your brain as a “yes”, then drop the conversation.
9. If she doesn’t give you a solid “yes” answer like that, she’s going to say something else. Listen very carefully to what she says, because you’re going to get quite an education about how women view long term monogamy. Answers I’ve heard have been things like:
“Well, no. But I love him!”
“Well, not for 45 years, but at least for a good 10 years maybe.”
“No, not really. But he’s a really good guy…”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t know, I guess we’ll see what happens.”
“Probably. I guess as long as he doesn’t ever cheat on me and gets a nice house for us to live in…”
“Well, no. But we’ve already scheduled the wedding, and already sent out the invitations…”
“What difference does it make how long we stay married?!? Does it really matter?!?”
“It doesn’t matter what happens later. What matters is what we do right now.”
“Why do you want to know?” or “Why are you asking me this?”
All of these statements and their variants are woman language  for: “No. I do not plan on being with this guy 45 years from now. At some point we’ll get divorced.”
10. Make a note of whether she gave you a solid yes answer or one of the “no” answers above, then repeat this with the next four engaged women.
If you do this, you will find, as I have found, that three or four of the five engaged women will respond in the negative. Three or four out of five women getting married have no intention whatsoever of actually staying with the man for “the rest of her life”.
As I’ve said before, women hate monogamy. The  only time they like monogamy (a little) is when it’s SERIAL monogamy, TEMPORARY monogamy. They also love getting married and having a wedding and a honeymoon. That’s the fun part.
But actually staying monogamous to one guy for 45 years? Uh, no. Not only do they hate that, in many ways they hate it more than men do.
Don’t believe me? Fine, don’t take my word for it…try the experiment yourself and see. You’ll find that most women are quite honest about the fact they don’t consider marriage as “permanent”.
Therefore, neither should you.
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When I got married I was hardcore sure we were going to stay together FOREVER and that divorce wasn’t even a possibility. Yet, 13 years later I got divorced anyway. So even those that consider it permanent right now…might think differently later!!
We have the 4 year mark, the 7 year makr, the 10 year mark and anything in between. The solution is simple. Live in with her for more than 10 years and THEN you marry. Why is this concept so hard to understand?
@liveofagirl
Let us take you as an example: Instead of marriage like you did – would you also have married him in year #11 of your relationship?
Shana at the Authentic Woman Experience comes right out and admits it on her blog:
http://www.authenticwomanexperience.com/2011/05/can-love-last/
At the time she wrote that she was seven years into her marriage, and her Facebook relationship status now is “it’s complicated.” Who could have predicted that? 🙂
Statistics on Covenant Marriages are another indication that people really don’t want marriage to be a lifetime commitment. According to a quick web search, only 1 – 2% of newlyweds in states that offer them choose that option over a standard no-fault marriage.
@Jon: It’s funny, looking at the comments of said article (and similar articles) there are pages of comments and it’s all arguments about how to force marriage to work; no one bothers to think that on a whole marriage simply doesn’t work. But that’s not actually a bad thing. Break away, adjust, carry on.
Like a friend once said; if you were looking for a vehicle (both on a lot and as an institution to carry you through life) if it had a fail rate of over 60% shortly after driving it off the lot (with high consiquence to over 50% of owners) would you still buy that vehicle?
A logical mind would tell you no. But as soon as you put this in the context of ‘what others expect of you’ etc. Logic seems to go out the window for most people. So, often, logic isn’t a good argument toward the masses.
maldek – why do you suggest marrying at all, because the same thing can happen at year 25 (year 15 of marriage)?
@Maldek- No, I wouldn’t have. I cheated for the first time on my 11th Anniversary as a matter of fact. At that point I was emotionally done with my ex husband.
We wouldn’t have lived together for that long before getting married though and in fact did not live together at all before our wedding date, due to religious beliefs. He was going into ministry and it wouldn’t have been appropriate to “live in sin”. :p
@girl
I lived with my wife 18 years before marriage. For most I guess a 10 year trial should be enough. Would have saved you a ton of trouble, wouldn’t it?
Made me a big sinner. If that is the only downside, I can live with that just fine.
@Reed,
If you have no children, there is no real benefit.
If you DO have children (plural), they might benefit from it.
Another reason beeing that my wife has earned it. I am not an easy person, sometimes I shout, sometimes I rule “with an iron fist” (as BD calles it) and
sometimes she has to share my time with my many interests. Like this blog, written by a familiar soul.
She who has the beauty to keep me interested for such a long time and the strength to endure my company deserves no less.
Black Dragon, since you are non-monogamous and advocate open marriage, and you also have children, I’d like your opinion on the 3rd video at the bottom, the 3rd in the series, wherein this wife and mother in an open marriage brings in her teenage daughter to give her opinion on what she thinks about her parents’ lifestyle.
(And the joking about condoms and the making sure that the people on the chat, her clients and friends, know that her daughter has condoms and practices safe sex.)
http://www.jujumamablog.com/2012/07/31/the-myth-of-monogamy-video-series/
I poked around at that video but didn’t see any teenage girls. My general impression of that mother is that it appears she consistently throws all of her sexual stuff right in her children’s face in a very inappropriate way, which is horrible parenting in my view. As I’ve talked about here before, I keep that part of my life very far from my teenage daughter.
One of the people in the video chat asked her what her kids think of her “open marriage” and she immediately called her teenage daughter over who said, “its like asking me what I think of breathing”.
She says her kids know all the “other loves” of their parents.
Her husband’s girlfriend comes and cooks for the kids when the mother is away in NYC visiting her boyfriend. Sometimes the boyfriend flies down to GA and has dinner at her house with her husband and kids.
Forget same sex marriage and gays adoption – that’s so stodgy and old school. THIS lady is what the future American family looks like.
Well that’s not the way I would do it, but it’s way better than monogamy and divorce!
I agree it might be better than divorce, and that is one of their platforms: saving marriages through “progressive love”.
But I fear she is setting her kids up for some major let downs and psychological problems. Are the young men and women in her daughter’s and sons’ futures going to be down with “progressive love”? Doubtful. These kids might have a real hard time finding people to pair bond with.
Besides, she is wrong about “humans are not a monogamous species”. It may not work for her but it works for a lot of us. And she admits she has an unusually high libido, which is most people don’t. It doesn’t help that we live in a pornified culture that artificially boosts sex drive.
Actually only about 16% of people have “low” sex drives. That leaves 84% of us with “normal” or “high” sex drives. That’s 84% of us who are at risk of cheating or divorcing in order to experience a new sexual partner.