The Married Man Sex Life Primer 2011 (48 page)
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Authors: Athol Kay
BOOK: The Married Man Sex Life Primer 2011
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(29.11) Marriage Creates a Financial Team
Primarily what legal marriage allows is to file your taxes together and gain access to a wide variety of financial benefits, health related access, shared information and wealth transfer after death. This is all the sort of thing that Gay Rights activists seek as they are real benefits with value. It’s not so much that gays and lesbians want the ability to be in sexual relationships with another person and live together – they can already do that – but they want access to things like joint health insurance and to be able to visit each other in the hospital more freely. They want to file their taxes together and when they die they want their loved ones to get the majority of their money and not have their estate gutted by the government. These are all the same things that heterosexual people want from marriage as well; to be turned into a financial team.
The downside to this creation of a financial team is that in situations where one partner provides the vast majority of the income, the other partner becomes increasingly regarded as a dependent. Should the marriage fail, the state tends to not want to increase its own costs by having to support the dependent. So the state looks to the partner with income to continue to support the dependent partner even though the marriage agreement is broken. This is called alimony and it varies greatly from state to state as to how much is required to be paid and for how long.
Obviously there is reasonable argument to be made that a stay at home wife has supported her husband’s career success and by assisting him to make vast sums of money, she has damaged her own ability to make money; therefore she should be supported into the future. The argument is that domestic support has been traded for greater income generation. While there is indeed some merit to this argument, the obvious complaint that goes along with alimony payments is that while income is still being transferred from the husband to the wife, she no longer is required to continue to provide that domestic support. She doesn’t make him any more sandwiches or do his laundry, but he keeps having to pay for the sandwiches and laundry she handled before they divorced.
Each state has its own alimony law and some seem reasonable and some seem appalling. I can only advise readers to look into their local alimony law for themselves. I’m simply raising it as a potential issue that can occur as a result of divorce. Bear in mind that you will lay the groundwork for an alimony judgment many years before that judgment will be made. If you agree that your wife should become a stay at home mother in your second year of marriage and you divorce in the fifteenth year of marriage, then you decided to set yourself up for alimony payments all the way back in your second year of marriage. There are clearly some wonderful stay at home mother’s that do creatively support their families and help advance their husbands’ career paths, but some appear to have successfully conned a man into becoming his dependent via the stay at home and/or alimony approach. Alimony laws do vary wildly from state to state, with some favoring alimony payments over a few years, while some still have lifetime alimony.
The creation of a financial team can result in ridiculous results such as in Massachusetts where there have been well documented cases where the
lifetime
alimony for the first wife, is based on the income of her ex-husband,
plus the income of his second wife!
lifetime
alimony for the first wife, is based on the income of her ex-husband,
plus the income of his second wife!
(29.12) Divorce and Moral Hazard
Furthermore, the financial team becomes jointly responsible for any children the wife has during the marriage. For the most part this proceeds without too much hassle; most dads do love their kids and want to support them. However, thanks to the no fault divorce law the marriage can end to the great surprise of the husband, whereupon the custody of the children can be split between the husband and wife or with solely one partner after divorce. Then the state will step in and ensure that income continues to flow from the parent with less custody (usually the husband) to the one with more custody (usually the wife). All of this can happen essentially without the consent or desire for a split family on the husband’s part. If the wife wants out of a marriage, the Family Court machinery just starts up and the husband is fairly powerless to affect the outcome. Sometimes the father does get primary custody of course, but around 80% of divorces are started by women and the courts award on average far greater custody to mothers.
For the most part this all makes sense from the perspective of the state, which is all that really matters as far as it is concerned. The emotional pain of an individual man is not an issue for the state. Say for example another man actively sets out to seduce a man’s wife, she sleeps repeatedly with the other man and she starts divorcing her husband. Her first move would be to allege that her husband threatened to hit her, which forces him out of the family home (by automatic arrest in some states), then keeps him out via restraining order and she retains full custody of the children while things are being looked into by the authorities.
It only takes a few angry verbal outbursts for a man to be regarded with extreme suspicion as a potential danger to his family and it can take months of costly legal effort to prove that he isn’t. Of course none of this hurts the state’s feelings, and the husband may very well be forced to pay both child support and alimony, and only get to see his children for a few hours a week as a result. Then if the other man moves into his former family home, he is forced to watch helplessly as all of this perfectly legal.
For a wife there can be a perceived incentive to kick her husband out of the house as she would still be “getting paid” via the court process. If the main factor about her husband that attracted her was his money, she can retain a fair percentage of it via divorce and simply cut him out of the picture. This is especially dangerous to her current husband if she has an affair partner who is also willing to bring his income into her home. She could thereby secure her half of the assets of the marriage, gain potential alimony and child support from her ex-husband, plus be supported by her new man as well. Of course almost all divorced women will tell you that being divorced is not something they ran at a profit, but there is the potential to take advantage of things if she is truly evil.
(29.13) The Husband is Responsible to Support Her Children
The other potential downside for a husband is that he becomes financially responsible for any children his wife has during the marriage, even the ones he does not want her to have. Say a couple has two children and agree that they don’t want a third one. If the wife flushes her birth control pills down the toilet and becomes pregnant again, the husband is still on the hook for supporting the child. He can use condoms of course and try and cover himself that way, but you really shouldn’t flush condoms and women have been known to fish them out of the trash and complete the job of getting pregnant that way.
Even worse is that studies show that roughly 8-10% of all children have their biological fathers misidentified. In other words, if your wife cheats on you and gets pregnant by another man, you’re on the hook for supporting the child. Considering that the wife is very well aware of her extra-marital sex, without protection, without contraception or use of the morning after pill, becoming pregnant by another man should be regarded as a deliberate act on her part and as the most outrageous fraud of her husband. Discovery of paternity fraud will have an enormously high chance of ending the marriage. Depending on state law and time elapsed, the husband may still have to pay child support for a child proven by DNA testing
not
to be his.
not
to be his.
This isn’t a men’s rights book, but an awareness of the harsh realities of what can happen when marriage goes bad isn’t a bad thing. For female readers, I hope this goes some way towards an explanation of why many men are “afraid of commitment” and the increasing popularity of prenuptial agreements.
(29.14) Summarizing Marriage 2.0
Marriage doesn’t guarantee that she will have sex with you, be faithful, or stay with you. Marriage legally creates a financial team that may result in ongoing financial support after a divorce and very likely support for any children she has during the marriage.
(29.15) So Why Marry Anyway?
After reading all this you might have the shakes if you’re a man and rightly so. Marriage is a risk and you stake a lot on having found a good woman to marry. Correct that. You stake
everything
on having found a good woman to marry.
everything
on having found a good woman to marry.
There are large upsides though. As I mentioned before, marriage creates a family unit as a financial team and that team can do better than two single people alone can. An accident or injury that might bankrupt a single person may only be a setback for a couple. It’s easier coping with the death of a family member as a couple than as a single. While it sounds unromantic to say that a woman sells “wife” and a man sells “husband”, if both make a fair trade it can provide a lifetime beneficial interpersonal economy to each other. Sometimes 2 + 2 really does equal 5.
Another added benefit is that many women have a deep need for security and safety in order to feel safe enough to fully embrace their sexuality. Most women feel an intense desire to have children at some point in their life, but they also desire a stable environment for those children. As many long time boyfriends have experienced, fertile girlfriends can bring considerable pressure to bear on the concept of getting married. It’s possible to lose out on a very high quality woman permanently by failing to marry her. If your gorgeous sweet-tempered girl moves out for lack of an engagement ring, the next girl in your bed may not be so appealing. The male “shelf life” differs from the female one, but you do have one. A woman leaving you for failure to marry can markedly damage your ability to attract a new partner, especially in a smaller community.
When marriage works well, it works
very
well for men. Study after study suggests that married men are happier and healthier than unmarried men. Plus married men have on average more sex than unmarried men. It’s always possible to point to sexless marriages as a pitfall, but on balance married men typically have longer, happier and sexier lives than those that don’t marry.
very
well for men. Study after study suggests that married men are happier and healthier than unmarried men. Plus married men have on average more sex than unmarried men. It’s always possible to point to sexless marriages as a pitfall, but on balance married men typically have longer, happier and sexier lives than those that don’t marry.
After a certain age the unmarried or never married man increasingly starts looking like damaged goods. The perception is that it’s not so much that he chose not to be married, but that he is incapable of a serious relationship or unable to attract anyone interested in being with him.
Marital sex isn’t always automatically excellent, but with a lifetime of practice with a partner you can become increasingly proficient at providing each other sexual pleasure. One of the most common statements from cheating spouses is that while the sex with the lover was novel and emotionally addictive, it wasn’t actually as physically good as sex with their spouse.
Also a shared history together can create a depth of love and understanding that short term relationships and hook ups simply cannot come close to approaching. Seeing your kids growing up, having family vacations and Christmas mornings together, there’s a lot to love and experience as a committed couple.
(29.16) The Good News
The very good news about Marriage 2.0 for a man is that your wife is freer than any generation of women before her. That can translate into her happiness, energy and sexual enjoyment with you. If it’s working well, the sexual connection is fantastic and better than any form of marriage before now.
(29.17) Marriage 2.0 Requires Endless Courtship
The key point to take away here is that marriage is vastly changed from what most people expect it to be. In the old version of marriage, men and women jostled for position to marry the best member of the opposite sex, in their small community that they could. They actively courted one another and displayed themselves as attractively as they could. Once they married though, they just settled down to the business of starting a family, raising kids and going to work. Essentially they had minimal concern that their spouse would be unfaithful, or that their marriage would ever end aside from death or serious abuse.
In the new version of marriage though, it can end at any time. It can end simply because your partner doesn’t want to be with you, or would rather be with someone else. You can be a “good” husband or “good” wife and be suddenly dispossessed of your spouse by court order simply because they announce,
“I love you but I’m not in love with you.”
Plus half your shared stuff goes as well and maybe the kids too.
“I love you but I’m not in love with you.”
Plus half your shared stuff goes as well and maybe the kids too.
The new marriage requirement is one of endless courtship. Spouses must, on an ongoing basis, display personality, behavior and appearance that increase the sexual and romantic interest their partners have in them.
You have no option about choosing to do The MAP or not, failure to do it risks your demise.
But if you court her in a manner that turns her on, the consequence is exceptional sexual excitement and freedom to explore that enjoyment together...
You have no option about choosing to do The MAP or not, failure to do it risks your demise.
But if you court her in a manner that turns her on, the consequence is exceptional sexual excitement and freedom to explore that enjoyment together...
…
which was what this book was all about.
which was what this book was all about.
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