OT: How much baggage will you accept?

[scaredyclassic]

I do feel really old and cranky. I was dealing with some young people about half my age recently and all I could think was I am so fucking old.

I sound like my dad

[scaredyclassic]

In terms of risk, from guys point of view marriage just seems wildly risky.

[kev374]

[quote=scaredyclassic]In terms of risk, from guys point of view marriage just seems wildly risky.[/quote]

Someone once told me that the person you marry is the single most important risk you take in life because the wrong choice has the capacity to utterly destroy you.

If you haven’t see the CNBC special Divorce Wars you should see it…

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xi7vjj_cnbc-originals-divorce-wars_news

[scaredyclassic]

today id be too much of a pussy to get married. you either have to be brave, deluded, optimistic or narcotically in love to overlook the potential for utter ruin.

im not really sure i see the point, rationally. whats the advantage?

well, with that attitude, id never get married…

[scaredyclassic]

on the other hand, it seems adorable when young people blithely do it. they may be too young to drink, dammit, but they aint too young ta get hitched.

[njtosd]

[quote=scaredyclassic]In terms of risk, from guys point of view marriage just seems wildly risky.[/quote]

Talk to your wife – I’m sure she would see it as equally risky.

[njtosd]

[quote=scaredyclassic]today id be too much of a pussy to get married. you either have to be brave, deluded, optimistic or narcotically in love to overlook the potential for utter ruin.

im not really sure i see the point, rationally. whats the advantage?

well, with that attitude, id never get married…[/quote]

What we don’t realize is that we felt different when we were younger – less neurotic, less risk averse. Every now and then something reminds me, and I realize that I was a different person 25 years ago.

[CA renter]

[quote=svelte]CAR, I’m gonna guess that you are a stay at home mom.

I think that would explain your skewed perspective. Stay-at-home moms tend to cling to older traditional concepts as you’ve described. But that doesn’t match reality.

Either that or you’re black – and I’ll explain why I say that below, where I’ll back up my position with factual data not generalizations and stereotypes.

[quote=CA renter]… most women would argue that having a husband who makes a decent living is necessary for a good marriage, as well. There are always exceptions, of course, but that doesn’t change the rule.
[/quote]

This is simply not true. Most women would NOT argue that a hubby who makes a good living is necessary for a good marriage. See attached data.

Your statement is only true of the subset of women who are black. It is not true of American women in general, and is especially not true of white American women.

[img_assist|nid=19270|title=Pew Data A|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=335|height=554]
[img_assist|nid=19271|title=Pew Data B|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=612|height=494][/quote]

Scaredy addressed where you’re wrong on this (thanks, scaredy). Even when looking at your own graphs, it clearly shows that having a husband who earns a decent income is very important to most women. It’s also interesting to note that they apparently didn’t include physical attractiveness in the study you’ve linked. You can see from what they *did* include that the spouse’s income is more highly valued by women than by men (women value it at least twice as much as men in the white population). If they had included physical attractiveness, I’m sure that men would have rated that very highly, while women would have rated it at a much lower level (relative to men).

Here is the quote that scaredy was referring to:

“Changing Spousal Roles. In the past 50 years, women have reached near parity with men as a share of the workforce and have begun to outpace men in educational attainment. About six-in-ten wives work today, nearly double the share in 1960. There’s an unresolved tension in the public’s response to these changes. More than six-in-ten (62%) survey respondents endorse the modern marriage in which the husband and wife both work and both take care of the household and children; this is up from 48% in 1977. Even so, the public hasn’t entirely discarded the traditional male breadwinner template for marriage. Some 67% of survey respondents say that in order to be ready for marriage, it’s very important for a man to be able to support his family financially; just 33% say the same about a woman.“

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2010/11/18/the-decline-of-marriage-and-rise-of-new-families/2/#ii-overview

Another study about mate preferences:

“Finally, we provide detailed evidence on gender di
fferences in revealed mate preferences.
Compared to previous revealed preference studies, we employ a much larger sample and control for a large number of own and partner attributes, which is necessary to guard against omitted variable bias. Our results are overall consistent with many of the previous findings in psychology and economics (e.g., Buss 1995, Eastwick and Finkel 2008, Fisman et al. 2006, Kurzban and Weeden 2005, Regan et al. 2000). In particular, women have a stronger prefer-
ence for income relative to physical attributes, such as facial attractiveness, height, or body
mass index. These results are consistent with predictions from evolutionary psychology (Buss
1989, Buss and Schmitt 1993) and the competing social structure theory (Eagly and Wood
1999).

http://home.uchicago.edu/~ghitsch/Hitsch-Research/Guenter_Hitsch_files/Mate-Preferences.pdf

[CA renter]

svelte,

I think you should read this article, too. While many women choose to work outside the home because they find it fulfilling (and prefer it to staying home with the kids all day), many do so because they feel as though they have no choice. Either they feel as though they would be destitute without that income, or they take an income-earning position because they don’t want to risk being helpless if the husband abuses or abandons them.

But many women are working for a negative income, especially those at lower income levels. After taxes (taxed at higher rates, if they are married to an income-earning spouse), childcare, work clothing, accelerated car repairs/purchases, additional costs related to eating out due to workload, inability to shop properly and negotiate with contractors or others with whom they have to do business in their personal lives, etc…after all of this is taken into account, women are often left with just a few cents on the dollar earned, if that. Add to that all of the additional stress and strain on the marriage and family, and the quaint notion that women can “have it all” begins to crumble.

This article is long, but it describes the frustration many women feel about their roles in society. As I’ve said before, if we really cared about women’s issues, we would officially recognize the work that they do and impute a dollar value to it (and it’s a lot), and make sure they are legally protected in the event of abuse or abandonment. That would be REAL feminism. Instead, the “feminists” pretend to care about women’s issues while denigrating the work that has been traditionally done by women and exalting “men’s work” as the only kind of work that has any value. That is wrong, IMO.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-cant-have-it-all/309020/?single_page=true

[CA renter]

[quote=njtosd][quote=scaredyclassic]In terms of risk, from guys point of view marriage just seems wildly risky.[/quote]

Talk to your wife – I’m sure she would see it as equally risky.[/quote]

If not more risky.

[scaredyclassic]

[quote=CA renter][quote=njtosd][quote=scaredyclassic]In terms of risk, from guys point of view marriage just seems wildly risky.[/quote]

Talk to your wife – I’m sure she would see it as equally risky.[/quote]

If not more risky.[/quote]

too risky then. marriage is out.

[scaredyclassic]

Prostitutes?

Please buy and read PAYING FOR IT by Chester brown. Autobiographical very thoughtful comic strip about a guy who gives up on relatio in ships and buys sex.

[scaredyclassic]

Maybe they need to change the question from “good husband”e” to “selecting a life partner with whom to produce and raise educated, healthy and successful children and enjoy a reasonable lifestyle into old age.”

[FlyerInHi]

CAr, in many ways, women have a better deal.

There are women like Carli Fiorina, Meg Whitman, Janet Yellen. But there aren’t many men equivalent of Ivanna Trump, Arianna Huffington. The latter 2 are highly intelligent but I don’t think they’d be who they are now had they not married billionaires.

I’m still waiting tor the one who will provide me the lifestyle I deserve. I’m not settling for anything less than a penthouse in Manhattan. I think that I’m intelligent and goodlooking enough to marry up and mingle with the upper classes.

I want a social advantage for my genes.

[UCGal]

I stepped away from this thread for a few days and boy-howdy….

Kev – you need to date women with similar money values to you. They’re out there. But may not be flashy… especially if you’re looking for someone who is a worker/earner, who saves her money, etc… She’s not going to be the woman with the coiffed hair, skin tight mini dress… she’s going to be the woman shopping for groceries in her work clothes, after a day at the office. I had my dream wedding for under $7k. But that’s because I prioritized spending the rest of the budget on travel with my husband. I had a similar net worth to my husband when we joined together…

I think Russ/Blogstar’s theory about same levels is a good theory. My husband is better looking and funnier than me- people like him quicker. But I’m steady, hard working, etc… people come to me for advise or problem solving or hard work. Together we make a great team… better together than apart. We came from different socio-economic places though… He’s from a huge Italian Catholic family, blue collar parents. I’m from a small WASP upper middle class family, parents and grandparents all college educated… That said – we both brought our experiences and learned from each other and each other’s families. We balance each other well, though we may not appear as balanced from the outside.

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