The death of marriage

With my longstanding and likely permanent inability to attract a mate weighing down on me more pressing than usual, I have come to realize that socioeconomic and cultural changes have conspired to render a potential happy ending to this situation increasingly untenable.

Think - what is marriage?

Marriage is a sacred institution, the apothesis of human bonding - a mutual commitment by two people (of opposite sexes, thank you very much) to form a socially sanctioned pair bond that in effect pledges exclusivity to each other in economic, interpersonal, and sexual affairs. Like everything moral, it is fundamentally an economic arrangement - the husband contributes his material efforts as a household provider, in exchange for the civilizing influence of the wife's attentions.

The man has much to gain, but of course at the expense of his ability to flit at a moment's notice. Yet it is greatly beneficial. Married men live longer and experience the contentment of a permanent companion with which to share his joys, his pains, his victories - not to mention an assurance that he will sire progeny that will survive him. In short, the proverbial "sex contract."

The arrangement is predicated on the inability of the woman to obtain her own sustenance (or more importantly, that of her children) without the assistance of her partner.

But what happens when this all breaks down?

What happens when women enter the workforce (or better yet, cling to the teat of State subsidy) in large numbers and are then able to support themselves and their children? Especially when such workforce, increasingly in demand of traditionally 'feminine' traits such as concentration and attention to detail, is largely tailored to their strengths?

What happens when illegitimacy is no longer viewed as shameful, so that unwed mothers are accepted as a normal facet of life?

What happens is that men suddenly become superfluous in the entire scheme.

What happens is that where once women selected mates that demonstrated traits of stability and discipline, traits that well suit committed married men, they increasingly came to ignore such traits as irrelevant - even that of "losers."

What happens is that women are then drawn to "exciting" and "romantic" bad boys - in short, real losers.

What happens is that pair bonds become fleeting or nonexistent - which poses no issue to the economically liberated women, or the promiscuous "bad boys" involved, who are always certain to find another hapless mark with their suave olive oil charms.

What happens is that men without exceptional advantages in life or the comportment of a psychopathic, parasitical "bad boy" start to drop out of society, slowly but surely - increasingly falling toward the margins where the pavement cracks and the weeds grow tall.

In the ghetto, the real world results of all this are your standard evening news fare or sociological screed. But this is not what I speak of here. I speak of those whose lives do not turn at the point of a 'gat.'

For the rest of us, marriage becomes a lifestyle choice largely confined to the upper classes, of which only the lucky few - the Type A dickhead class so favoured by the privileged country club set who dictate all cultural norms - succeed at achieving.

And it then follows that all those men who do not fit the mold of privilege - who are merely normal, not earning six figure salaries in their twenties - are thus forever branded as unmarriageable "losers."

And it of course follows that these men, the regular Joe, non exceptional but hard working, honest, workaday fellas, who desire the happiness and commitment of married life are denied this privilege.

And so we sit alone, increasingly rejected and marginalized by greater society, confined to the margins, barred from communion with potential mates and pretty much everyone else.

So it was that Western civilization created an instant underclass of losers amongst its most productive, dependable citizens. 

Thanks a lot, folks.