35 Comments on “Getting Engaged”

1. “I seriously feel sorry that women have to be treated this way by a ridiculous society whose views on marriage and monogamy are at least 60 years out of date.”

   Yes our society is out of touch with reality but it is the opposite direction you seem to favor. How would you raise kids? All working single moms?

   The traditional model of SAHM who raises the kids worked well. If the man decides to have a mistress on the side or not, is of little importance to the bigger picture.
   The bigger picture beeing CHILDREN (plural) having an intact core family.

   If we can find a common ground that this is important for raising mentaly healthy children, we can go from there.

   So let us look at the women side. The older a woman gets – say past 30 – the lower her SMV will be and the lesser her options. We could also say that the quality of man a woman can get at 22 is HIGHER than the quality of man she can get at 32 on average.

   On top of that comes the fact that you may be able to have 1 or 2 children if you start at 32 as a woman (!). But if you want 5 or 6 you better start early. We can debate if 5 or 6 children is a worthwhile goal for a woman but I can assure you there ARE women who want such a high number. For a society as a whole our current situation in the west is, that the white population is rapidly outbred by more brownish races and this is NOT a good thing in the long run.

   For a young woman in her early 20s it may be the best course of action to optimize her looks and then grab the highest value man she can find and get a few babies.
   If the marriage does not work out well, she will at least have her babies and most likely be $ wise well off.
   If I was a woman I would prefer this path over the corporate brothel any day.

   PS: The girl to the left is the only one on the picture with some style and I doubt that any of the other girls has the potential to land a quality man because none of them dresses like a quality girl that deserves such a man. Therefore her negative expression may very well be genuine because the girls are going to marry cubicle-slaves aka low value males who will not be able to save them from the burden of having to work for a living. 😛

2. “whole our current situation in the west is, that the white population is rapidly outbred by more brownish races and this is NOT a good thing in the long run.”

   ha! Lemme guess maldek, you live in a compound in Coeur d’ Alene, right?

3. “This is horrible. I’ve seen many beautiful, wonderful, intelligent women really get depressed or upset about this. She’s 26 or 31 and not married yet, so no matter how amazing her life is, no matter how amazing she is, no matter what she’s accomplished, all of that means nothing to her personal happiness because her female friends are getting married and she feels left out. Moreover her friends and family members look down their noses at her because she’s not married yet. And she feels this.”

   Hey BD, excellent post…as usual.
   What do you think of the following explanation?

   That most (90%) women are driven, by their instincts, to build SOCIAL value, i.e. networks of other women around them.
   Instincts created by 100,000 years of women relying on, and supporting each other in the traditional female roles of child bearing, child rearing, food gathering / preparing, keeping the home, etc. A prehistoric woman could not, literally, have survived on her own, without the other women of her tribe.

   These primal instincts still remain in our women today.
   It doesn’t matter how intelligent, educated, enlightened or accomplished they are.
   Most of them are absolutely SHIT SCARED of decreasing, or losing, their social network of other women…through lowering their social value in their friends’ eyes by not being married by a certain age…
   Societal Programming has certainly capitalised on this but underpinning it is this instinctive drive for women to build strong social value with other women.

   (This is the same explanation for the phenomenon of ASD)

   If you can accept this argument, then it seems to me that the (highly improbable) solution would be to get Societal Programming to do a 180 and make NOT EVER getting engaged or married the “normal” or “accepted” or “fashionable” course to take amongst women.

   Instinct-driven Social Value building would then be driving them towards the various models of Open Relationships.
   The women who get married would then be the ones feeling “left out”.

   Of course, the likelihood of this ever happening is remote in the extreme!!

   Interesting theory though.

   would be interested in your thoughts, BD.

4. That girl in red… she is me. Or should i say a great representative of me. She knows the statistics and watches her friends get caught up in the whirlwind of bridalmania only to land on their face… with screaming kids and dirty dishes and neverending laundry. The cute husband then is now fat and balding and snores profusely while you secretly dream of a sock big enough to shove down his throat. No Thank You!

5. Yes our society is out of touch with reality but it is the opposite direction you seem to favor. How would you raise kids? All working single moms?

   No. Open marriages that last 10-15 years. I’ve described one example with kids right here.

   For a young woman in her early 20s it may be the best course of action to optimize her looks and then grab the highest value man she can find and get a few babies.
   If the marriage does not work out well, she will at least have her babies and most likely be $ wise well off.

   If you’re suggesting that women wanting kids get a semi-open marriage with a prenuptial agreement with the realization that it will likely last 10-15 years or so, then you agree with me. If you’re suggesting a young woman wanting kids get married without a prenup and expect that marriage to last forever, then you’re living in a world of 63% divorce rates and 70% infidelity rates, where she’ll (likely) end up an angry single mother with kids who don’t see their fathers often enough.

   Most of them are absolutely SHIT SCARED of decreasing, or losing, their social network of other women…through lowering their social value in their friends’ eyes by not being married by a certain age…

   Agree.

   If you can accept this argument, then it seems to me that the (highly improbable) solution would be to get Societal Programming to do a 180 and make NOT EVER getting engaged or married the “normal” or “accepted” or “fashionable” course to take amongst women

   Yeah, I tend to agree. But like you said, this will probably never happen.

   Open marriages, prenuptial agreements, non-marriages, pre-planned temporary marriages, poly marriages, etc, will start becoming more and more normal in society as more men get tired of getting raped in divorces and more women get tired of getting cheated on. However I don’t think open marriages will ever be the 99% norm. No matter how normal and traditional open marriages/relationships become, I’m confident there will always be an unusual 10% – 20% of the population who will choose long-term Disney monogamy as a path anyway. This will include very religious people, very needy people, low-sex drive people, etc.

   This is the answer to those people who scream at me “Well what if EVERYONE DID THIS???” Everyone won’t do this. Decades down the road most people will, but there will always be a monogamous group within society.

   Therefore you’ll never see this “NOT EVER” stuff you mention, though I do agree it would solve the problem.

   with screaming kids and dirty dishes and neverending laundry. The cute husband then is now fat and balding and snores profusely while you secretly dream of a sock big enough to shove down his throat.

   But at least she gets a fairytale WEDDING! And a pretty engagement ring! And all of her girlfriends will kiss her ass! Like, OMG! 🙂

6. I’m convinced that most of the jealousy of single women is simply that they want to be the centre of attention with a big shiny diamond on their hand they can show off to their friends. And of course the wedding day itself is now just a huge extravaganza of attention whoring for the bride. I’ve seen two brothers and several friends get married and at all of them the groom was little more than an afterthought. The thought of actually having to live a day-to-day life with someone after getting married seemingly doesn’t even come into it for many young women – it’s all about how many likes they can get on Facebook when they put up a pic of the ring.

   I also agree on the ‘women needing serious relationships at Christmas’ thing. I’ve had a couple of offers over the holidays already. In fact three girls I know have actually gotten engaged over Christmas. Two of them to ultimate betas, I lolled.

   And just for the record I think some of the other girls in the pic above aren’t bad at all, definitely a couple I would bang on the back row 🙂

7. BD,

   You’re wrong on a lot here. Very wrong. First of all, the divorce rate is heavily dependent on education levels. The divorce rate for the college educated is 17%, not 50%. College, not matter that its really Leftist indoctrination, correlates with higher intelligence and longer term planning. Infidelity rates are also lower for the college educated.

   Secondly, you are wrong about the socio-sexuality of the human race. Well at least the more K-selected races; i.e. whites and asians. All socio-sexuality studies indicate that higher promiscuous people, or people open to “open” relationships, are less than 20%. Maybe even less than 15%. The overwhelming majority of people do not want open relationships or promiscuous lifestyles (the data is different for blacks who are the most promiscuous of the races largely because of higher testosterone levels). Largely people with high socio-sexuality tend to mate with each other. The way the human race is currently wired, (genetic engineering would change everything) women are not wired to pursue open relationships. They’re wired to pair bond with a man who will commit. Yes they have short term selection criteria as well. But for most women past 25, the reality of the prime directive, ie having children and forming a nest, hits them. This is why its easy to game women under 25 and gets incrementally harder after that age.

   I also think that your personal experience is what a statistician would call “selection bias”. You are screening for women that accept the poly lifestyle. So you think *all* women are like that. They are not, not by a long shot. IMO, healthy women SHOULD want marriage, monogamy and children. And the smart ones will start to pursue finding a quality man (a greater beta in gamespeak but not an “alpha”) in EARNEST at the age of 23. The women in the photo may be silly but they are smart in the big picture. Their looks are their primary tool for acquiring a committed mate. They will all be older for a far greater time in life than younger. A woman’s top looks last only to about 27 or so, after that its all makeup. They weren’t designed to be sex kittens forever. Getting married to a good man while young is a far healthier thing for the woman and for society. Western civilization was built by committed monogamous males. Polyamory is the hallmark of SAVAGE societies. Not a model we should follow.

   As far as PUAs go, your system is the best for those who want that lifestyle which my guess is will be less than 10-15% of males past 33 years old (and not the most successful contingent at that). Most men are not wired to constantly engage in the eternal sexual recruitment of women. The best men don’t.

   As far as PUAs go, you are the most mature but your take on human sexuality is still wrong. Most people are not wired the way you think they are. Healthy women want marriage and children. They foolishly hookup with players and non-committed men and put themselves in fwb situations. This does not help them. The studies are showing that happiness for a woman is in a committed relationship with a strong man. Post modern nihilism (including feminism) has maliciously sold promiscuity to women as a virtue and players and PUAs have capitalized on it. In a healthier society, the more promiscuous would stay by themselves in their own sub-culture and the mainstream would not glorify them as they do today. That’s something else you are wrong on. You see today’s society as some “Disneyesque” traditionalist society. Bullshit. Ours is the most debased, promiscuity-pushing society in human history. The Disney elements are no longer operative. Sadly.

   As for me, I’ve been doing the PUA thing as a temporary lifestyle to experience some things I never did when I was young. But I can already see that I am increasingly seeing the whole thing as nihilistic. And seeing a good woman only once per week is insane. I do not consider any man past the age of 33 who does that as “normal”. You are looking at outliers at that point. Personally any woman who accepts that arrangement is fucked up in more ways than you can count.

   Lastly the cutest girl of the bunch is the second girl from the Left in the top row. She’s adorable.

8. @Nosferatu has some great insight on why young women need social proof. Makes sense to me. And it’s true we never will get all of society to do a total 180 degree turn on its attitudes about young women needing to enter into un-keepable commitments of life-long monogamy. However, I think what is a reasonable goal is to create new sub-groups in society where life-long monogamy is not something to strive for. The polyamory and similar movements seem to be doing exactly this. Let’s do all we can to support polyamorous women, by seeking them out, befriending them, dating them if the chemistry is right, and supporting them in the difficult transition of throwing off false societal programming.

   Being a resident of Idaho, I have to stick up for Coeur d’ Alene. Yes, the stereotype that racists live in the area is founded in some truth, but it should also be mentioned that Coeur d’ Alene has a thriving polyamorous community, which is at least as big as the one in Boise, a much larger city. If polyamory can be a growing sub-culture in a town like Coeur d’ Alene, it can grow anywhere.

9. the divorce rate is heavily dependent on education levels. The divorce rate for the college educated is 17%, not 50%

   This is the first I’ve heard of the 17% figure. You’ll have to show me links so I can get into the mathematics of exactly how they’re coming up with that dubiously low figure. When I talk about divorce rates, I’m talking about the odds a woman will EVER get divorced in her entire life, not if she’s managed to stay married for 5 or 10 years during whatever survey or data pool they happened to take.

   Moreover, your assumption that education = lower divorce rates is wrong. It’s more accurate to say that most women with college degrees generally tend to marry later in life (dropping the divorce rate), have less children (dropping the divorce rate again), and tend to be more organized people (dropping the divorce rate yet again). It’s not education that makes them more likely to be stable…it’s that stable women are more likely to go to college than disorganized idiots. Even then, it’s not all good. I can also show you studies that show the more educated a woman is, the more likely she will be the one initiating the divorce if there is one. Anyway, that’s a very big topic that’s way off-topic here, but that’s the gist of it.

   The overwhelming majority of people do not want open relationships or promiscuous lifestyles

   Then why do so many people cheat?

   The way the human race is currently wired, (genetic engineering would change everything) women are not wired to pursue open relationships. They’re wired to pair bond with a man who will commit.

   Then why do so many people cheat?

   The studies are showing that happiness for a woman is in a committed relationship with a strong man.

   Then why do so many of them cheat in long relationships or marriages? And how do you explain the high divorce rate? Even your dubious 17% is ridiculously high. If what you’re saying was true, the divorce rate would be around 5%, as would the infidelity rate.

   You are screening for women that accept the poly lifestyle. So you think *all* women are like that. They are not, not by a long shot.

   No, I don’t screen. I date a lot of “normal” women.

   But you’re right. Most women do not want a man to come along and say, “We’re going to have an open relationship where I can go fuck a bunch of women on the side!” Instead, most women pursue a relationship where a man PROMISES to not fuck other women, but who then ends up cheating on them behind their backs. Then they give the guy drama and/or dump the guy. Or, the guy never cheats, and the woman gets bored with the guy and dumps/divorces him and finds a new guy. THAT’S what women do, and both of those systems are fundamentally incompatible with long-term monogamy.

   You are following the opinion that “traditional monogamy sucks, but it’s still the best”. That would be true if divorce rates and infidelity rates were around 5% or 10%, but you’re conveniently ignoring the fact they aren’t. The occurrences of these things are massive, even among smart educated people. You have to admit that means something.

10. @Jack:

    Holy shit brother! How many blue pills did you swallow? If you hold mainstream views for longer than 4 hours, you need to call a red pill pharmacy immediately!!!

    You have such a sweet, angelic view of womanhood! Buddy, they are NOT these innocent monogamous angels that you speak of.

    Healthy people want marriage? Why would ANYONE want governmental approval of their sex life? What for? Can’t you validate your own sex life? Or do you need a bureaucratic group hug from “society?” No dude, inviting the government into your relationship is an UNHEALTHY thing to do, no matter how you slice it!

    Healthy people want monogamy? Really? Why would anyone want to own another human being, or care what someone else does with their body when they are not with you. Human beings hate life to the extent that it’s mandatory. They love life to the extent that it’s voluntary. You’re more likely to get a woman to sleep with you, and only you, if you give her permission to sleep with others. Why would you be so needy as to restrict her comings and goings? Why would you restrict your own sex life to just one woman and give her the power to sexually frustrate you at will? And why can’t you have children in a stable open relationship, instead of an unstable cheating one, or an unstable boring and angry one?

    Your slut shaming is breathtakingly closed minded and bigoted! Society is anti-Disney??? Then why do I see slut shamers like you on every street corner and people who want promiscuity only in the minority?

11. BD, I just made a comment and it’s not showing. What’s up with that?

12. Your comment got caught by the WordPress spam filter. It’s above; I just pushed it through.

13. I am not going to paint marriage out as the holy grail. But statistics consistently show married people are happier, live longer and have more sex than single people.
    That’s a pretty good endorsement.

14. @AKA — If the happiness/life-span/sex-frequency levels of the typical married person is the best I can hope for, I think I’ll check out now. True, most single people are even more miserable, but that’s because most don’t understand what they need to do to satisfy their basic relationship needs. That’s why I read blogs like this, because I want more out of life, enabling me to give more back to life, than the typical middle-aged and retired married guy.

15. WIlliam, I think people like you and BD and me for that matter will find happiness on our own terms, whether we are married or not. What BD describes above about married people is generally true.

    Yet there are the top 5% of people who are willing to look within themselves to discover pathways to success and happiness. I think we are in that 5%. I fully believe that you can be happier than most as a single man. BD can be happier than most as a plate spinner. I will be fine as a married dude. we will arrange our lives to benefit ourselves. It will happen just because we ask the question and pursue the answers.

16. I fully believe that you can be happier than most as a single man. BD can be happier than most as a plate spinner. I will be fine as a married dude.

    You’ll be fine as a married dude…now, in the short run. I don’t know how old you are, but by the time you’re 55 blue pill married and monogamous and I’m 55 with an OLTR (maybe married maybe not, but not monogamous) or still living the FB/MLTR lifestyle, and they hooked us up to lie detectors and asked us how happy we are most of the time, who do you honestly think will be happier? Be honest.

    (Of course that’s assuming you’re still married by the time you reach 55…)

17. i am 51 years old, married 25. I’ve been w/ same woman for 29 years. If my wife was gonna turn into a sexless fat hag she would have done it long ago. We only have 2-3 more years to work and then we are retiring. I’ve never been happier.

    if you polygraph me up in 3 years, I’m gonna be much happier than you. Right now? who knows.

18. @Maldek: Three questions:

    1. Why do you want to spare women “the burden of working for a living?” Sounds like you’re a female supremacist.

    2. You say that daddy having a mistress on the side doesn’t hurt the family. Well what’s wrong with mommy also having a couple men on the side? It’s called an open relationship. Why should it be open only on the man’s side?

    3. Please explain how your vision of a sexual utopia differs from the Taliban!

19. @William W:

    You are a great man, sir. I solute you. I applaud you. I give you a standing ovation. I tip my hat to you. I put you in the spotlight while pointing at you with my whole hand and saying to the audience – “Eh? Eh?

    Seriously man! We need more men like you if our society is ever going to become truly liberated and beat “the cult of virginity and purity!” It’s seriously time to piss on Disney‘s totalitarian grave!

20. AKA -> thumbs up!

    Jack -> It is called reality. The rich and powerful often live like that.

21. @Maldek:

    Do you seriously want to imitate those inbred freaks? You’re talking about a group of sick people who engage in pre-arranged marriages just to preserve certain bloodlines and have bisexual group sex, not because they’re attracted to anyone in the group, but just for the purposes of social lubrication and the establishing of political alliances!

    And like I said, there’s a lot of incest and pedophilia going on! Um no, I think we should stay away from the “rich and powerful.”

    On the plus side though, both the men AND the women in powerful circles have open marriages but only put up a front for the monogamous sheep. But like I said, the monogamy, in addition to looking “normal,” is also to forcefully preserve certain bloodlines in the form of having children with their official spouses whom they may very well be physically disgusted by,

22. @Maldek…You say that daddy having a mistress on the side doesn’t hurt the family.

    This is the crux of the matter. Marriage in and of itself is fine. The expectation of consistent and absolute monogamy that lasts 50 years straight is not fine, and that’s what these young 20-something women are expecting (maybe) and planning on. If guys like Maldek, AKA, and others having long-lasting marriages where one spouse or the other (or both) have gotten a little on the side (whether or not they admit it) is totally fine and a bolster to my overall point.

23. Your overall point is a great one BD.

    Whenever I point at different way to the common goal of happiness it is for a simple reason.

    You did try marriage and from reading your posts it became pretty clear it didnt work out so well. So now you do MLRT and you like it.

    Me on the other hand did the exact opposite. I did try open relationship first (in the past) and when you say that women are open to it, I realized the same truth. It just happened that *Maldek himself* was the problem. My now wife had about 3 or 4 guys on the side I know of and truth be told, thats was a problem for me. Sure it was fun to have FB/other women but it did not outweight my personal problem with other side of the coin.

    Now after talking to many (and yes thats more than 2 :P) other men I realized that most guys are like me. We have no problem having a mistress but the idea that our gf/wife is fucking some dude at the same time is an issue. It was 12 years ago, that we found a workable solution.

    Hope this little story gave you a bit of insight where I come from and why I write postings the way I do.

24. Yes, I have been mono w/ my wife for 28 years. What most people don’t understand about marriage is that each partner in marriage has to keep working at it. Most people get married so that they can retire from the sexual market place. The man goes beta. The woman gets fat, bitchy and frigid. So of course their marriages suck. You cannot escape the SMP by getting married. And that’s what most people do and that’s why they are in shitty marriages.

    My wife goes to the gym 6 days a week and does more than plod along on a treadmill at 2 MPH. She could replace me in a heartbeat if she wanted to. I am confident, in good shape. I’ve learned to game my wife and game other women so that my wife sees that I have options besides her. I could replace her easily if I wanted to. Just because we are married doesn’t mean that we no longer have standards and expectations of the other person. If my wife quits fucking me for whatever reason, I’m leaving.

    Furthermore, it’s a man’s job to lead the marriage. If I’m not getting what I want from it, it’s my own dam fault and it’s up to me to fix it. If I can’t fix it I have to move on. And if it means being apart from my kids, well tough shit. My dick is more important than my kids. I’m not sticking around in some celibate prison cooped up w/ some psycho wife just so I can see my kids.

    TL:DR. Marriage is not the problem. If you are not happy, you are the problem.

25. We have no problem having a mistress

    Great. I’m glad you and I agree that long-term monogamy is a stupid idea that doesn’t work.

26. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr049.pdf

    Take a look at page 8 of this report – it’s a comprehensive study on marriage disolution rates. For college educated women, likelihood of divorce is only about 30% (for first 20 yrs of marriage). For Asian couples, college educated, it’s about 20%.

    Yes, the caveat ‘for first 20 years of marriage’ is thrown in there, but to be fair a enrollment in college for the female population has significantly increased since about 20 years ago.

    For non-college educated, it’s about 50%.

    Not arguing for or against marriage one way or another, just wanted to share this report that has a lot of interesting statistics.

27. Very cool. I’ll go through it after the holiday. 30% makes much more sense than 17%, but 30% is still dreadful. I wouldn’t bet my future income, retirement, investments, monogamy desires, and children on any system with a 30% failure rate.

28. I guess I’m in that 70% “success” rate — being married to a woman with a Master’s degree for 12 years now. Trust me — our marriage isn’t a success. We tolerate each other, and since she seems to be sincere about trying open marriage rather than getting a divorce, I’ll probably stay married since I want to spend as much time with our kids as possible.

    What would really be interesting is what percentage of people who stay married would do so if they knew there were other options, and getting out of the marriage wasn’t so damn expensive and messy and hard on the kids.

29. A very funny spoof of the engagement photo. Hopefully you’ll be able to see this.

30. This is an interview with the girl on the bottom left. One of the most annoying interviewers I have ever seen because the (porky) interviewer approaches it from the point of view that the girl being interviewed is desperate to be engaged and was jealous, rather than the fact that she thinks the whole engagement thing is bulls*it, which is clearly the case. Megan seems like a cool girl.

    http://on.aol.com/video/woman-in-engagement-season-viral-photo-talks-to-huffpost-live-518043116

31. I just want to confirm your accurate observation about women jumping into relationships during the holiday season, then jumping out in February/March. I personally experienced exactly this 2 times!

32. I think Maldek is onto something quite wise in his 1st comment…

    Especially when he hints (IMO) at something profound with his turn of the phrase ‘corporate brothel’.

    You take 20-something submissive chicks nowadays – they have no fuckin’ legitimate workplace skills whatsoever, unless maybe they are a nurse or something. But they feel stuck entering the meat grinder of the corporate world or public sector-industrial-complex.

    They are submissive, so they can kiss ass well enough to get hired in whatever entry-level capacity least-worst suits them…

    And they will basically contribute no productive value to their career occupations, other than serving as fresh ass to be leered at and slobbered over by mostly older men who are bored to fuckin’ death 5-6 days a week, 50-51 weeks a year. Corporate brothel, indeed. So @Jack – that’s all they’re good for anyway (it has nothing to do with ‘letting them get away with not working’. It’s that they’re worthless in the workplace, period).

    But where Maldek is also onto something – It seems highly conceivable that if you nailed down a 25-year-old submissive chick, put a baby in her every 3-4 years until she was 40, and you’re a man who actually keeps his word and doesn’t cheat (even when he wants to), you have a situation where monogamy could…possibly work? That may be ‘hero’s journey’ bullshit speculation, but there it is…

33. That may be ‘hero’s journey’ bullshit speculation

    Yep. That’s exactly what it is.

34. Hey Joe why would you employ someone with no work skills unless you sign them up as on the job training Woman work just as hard as men in the private sector,public sector,anyway you cant be slack at work its noticed by your workmates ,management You’ll be asked to leave Don’t know what sort of work you do but it sounds like you have a case of sour grapes!!

35. Every November and December I see women instantly “commit” to guys they barely know (or old guy friends they have recently reunited with) into “serious” exclusive relationships faster than at any other time of year.
    I also often see these relationships fail in a torrent of drama by about March the following year, just after Valentine’s Day.

    Holy $hit!!! are u some sort of Warlock, BD?… this is exactly what happened to me.