The Increasingly Antagonistic War of the Sexes: The State of our Unions

The University of Virginia National Marriage Project yearly puts out a report on marriage and divorce called, The State of Our Unions: Marriage in America. And things looks bad. Of course, what everyone seems to talk about, the divorce rate, is on a gradual decline. And that, by itself, is good. But the marriage rate is not only declining, it is doing so at an accelerating rate.

First thing to notice (pic 1, courtesy of Family in America) , is that the number of marriages is decreasing. Unless you are saving yourself for marriage, virtually every reason for marriage is now obsolete. Perhaps you say, those things that denigrated the single and out-of-wedlock were bad, but the alternative isn't looking so hot either.

Using this graph, a back-of-the-envelope calculation tells me that in 35 years, the marriage rate will reach 0. Of course, there will be a few weirdos like Mormons and Catholics who will keep on regardless. Already, it is very nearly broken in some cultural circles : see "Marriage is for White People".

Elsewhere, the last 30 years of marriage rates were trend line fitted and found to be accelerating at a rate that gives us about 20 years, give or take, before marriage as a cultural institution is effectively dead for the masses. Men and Women have effectively decided, "Why buy the cow if the milk is free?"

This makes the entire divorce hand-wringing seem like it is quite missing the point. I could point out a host of other alarming graphs and statistics, but this doesn't give you significant pause, nothing else will either.

The Pew Research Center doesn't have much good to say either - putting those who are actively seeking a relationship as a minority.

I see no solution for this or the ills it will bring with it, but the Gospel itself.

Mormons Honor Tolkien « MORMON SOPRANO

"Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might be found more suitable mates. But the real soul-mate is the one you are actually married to. (J. R. R. Tolkien, Letter to Michael Tolkien, March 1941)"

PS. More on the War of the Genders coming soon!

The Increasingly Antagonistic War of the Sexes: Dating

I read once that Lucifer's goal was to unite what God has separated, and to separate what he has put together. The war of the sexes has only festered hotter and hotter. Neither side is the sole guilty party, and I am very suspicious of anyone who lays blame more on one side than the other. This is not the ordinary antagonism that stems from "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" - from ordinary differences in gender. This war, as now raging, will end in the destruction of the family -and civilization as we know it, unless we cease to fight on its terms. I am going to take some time to discuss the battlegrounds this war takes place on. If you can only see mostly one side at fault - YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM!

A post over at Gently Hew Stone described how political correct genderism is now veering anti-male. Or we could look at the whole Tiger Woods debacle. My goal would never be to defend his philandering, but to point out the extreme double-standand when it came to domestic abuse. The American Media seemed to prefer bizarre cover stories to what actually happened that night with the SUV and broken window, while the Swedish media, encouraged his wife to hit him again. Can this kind of an attitude do anything but drive the sexes apart?

Today, let's look at dating.

The world of dating is in sad sad shape. The dynamics of dating have shifted significantly since the rise of the sexual revolution. Dating once had a goal of courtship and marriage - now it is primarily short-term enjoyment. Once the goals of dating and also marriage shifted, patterns of dating changed as well. And who did these change in patterns benefit? By and large, they benefitted the Alpha Male (and arguably the Alpha Female). They were the ones that got all the attention and sex they could handle. The Beta Males (ordinary Joes) were the big losers, along with Beta Females once they were past their prime.

Things might be better in the Church, but if so, only marginally. Roughly a third of adult church membership is single.

We have more dating services than ever before, online and offline, and an increasingly large and frustrated body of single adults. And it isn't getting better.

This has led to the rise of "Game" and its practitioners, the pick-up artists.

Now, I will not condemn all usage of Game because parts of it are genuinely useful. But in general, its purpose is help beta-level men to seduce women. Many guys turn to this, not out of a desire to be Don Juan's or Casanova's, but simply because dating these days makes Wall Street cutthroats look warm and fuzzy and fishing in the Sahara look worthwhile. They are mainly just average nice guys tired of finishing last.

It is bad enough that even the top of the chain pick-up artists complain about it.

A recent comment over at The Spearhead points out clearly both the problems with Game, and why

One of my problems with Game, which Todd White and Elliott point out, is the inherently degrading worldview that is a result of embracing the philosophies of Game and evolutionary psychology out of context. Most supporters of Game merely argue that it is what it is. Humanity and human nature are ugly so get over it. But to me this is too simple an answer. Do women, by their very nature, typically only want to mate with thugs and practitioners of game, and raise children in fatherless broken homes? In the west at the present moment, one could answer yes and present a host of evidence to support that claim. But was it always this way throughout human history?

Things have not always been this way. While it can be dangerous to rhapsodize about the past, we used to have stable families that loved each other. This is much better for spouses, and even when there is no love lost between the parents, it is better for the children. Both genders are taking advantage of the easiest way - non-committal sex and no families to burden them. Likewise, the reason divorce rates have been dropping has more to do with marriage rates dropping than any sudden increase in virtue.

A strong argument could be made that the fact that a large portion of males who are healthy and financially stable (Betas) are hated and rejected by most women is a symptom of societal and cultural decay, not human nature or nature’s ideal for evolution. The fact that using heroin could make me a junkie isn’t proof that it’s my nature to be a junkie. Similarly, the fact that most women are amoral, and hookup with as many thugs and bad boys as possible in their youth, and then expect a nice guy or the “State” to pay for their offspring isn’t indicative that this is the norm and how it should be. This is enabled through corrupt government and cultural decay. Similarly, women’s behavior and taste in men has also been affected by this decay and a lack of quality men (i.e. fathers) and women (i.e. wise mothers and grandmothers) in their lives.

This is in the World, but too often, these same attitudes creep in by osmosis, among us.

I won’t go into depth here, but the masculinization of women probably plays a large role in why you need Game these days to get a woman. A normal healthy man doesn’t do it for them anymore. They need someone who represents a hypermasculine ideal to get their juices flowing, whether it is a thug or a Gamer that fools them. Again, this isn’t proof that this is simply the nature of women and how things are.

This is what we call a Red Queen's Race, from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass. We all have to move fantastically fast merely to keep up, and get ahead, you have to move even faster than that. What was good enough for dating 60 year ago, or even 30 years ago, simply is not sufficient to garner any attention these days, unless you are particularly good looking or are particularly natural with women.

If you want to keep score on who is at fault in this war, the score is currently
Men: 2
Women: 2
Both for Acting like jerks (1) and shortchanging the Family (1).

This is only going to get more vicious as we discuss marriage, divorce, gay marriage (and not for the reasons you are thinking).

The war of sexes is nobody's friend.

Some Counter-Intuitive Facts about Loneliness. | Psychology Today

An interesting blog post over at Psychology Today on the effects of loneliness.

--Loneliness “sets us apart by making us more fragile, negative, and self-critical.”
--“When people feel lonely they are actually far less accepting of potential new friends than when they are socially contented.”
--“Lonely students have been shown to be less responsive to their classmates during class discussions, and to provide less appropriate and less effective feedback than non-lonely students.”
--“When people feel rejected or excluded they tend to become more aggressive, more self-defeating or self-destructive, less cooperative and helpful, and less prone simply to do the hard work of thinking clearly.”
--Bonus loneliness tidbit: “People with insecure, anxious attachment styles are more likely…to form perceived social bonds with television characters.”
Loneliness makes us so anxious and worried about rejection that it distorts our thinking and our behavior."
Some Counter-Intuitive Facts about Loneliness. | Psychology Today:

Loneliness is not merely unpleasant - it is very bad for us physically and spiritually.

Women in Siberia pushing for polygamy

Short story - severe economic recession in Siberia prompts women to decide polygamy would be a solution to their problems

A study of polygamy in Russia

Interesting.

The Purpose of Marriage

A lot of the difficulties in marriage stem from a misunderstanding of what marriage is for, or why we have it. Divorce in particular is often predicated on this.

Marriage is not primarily a social arrangement or something you do because you need someone. That just leads to unhealthy relationships and codependence.

It is for emotional fulfillment, sexual fulfillment, self-fulfillment or fulfilling you in any way. It can be good, even great at these things - but that is not what it is for, not primarily.

It is like our mouths. They are meant for talking and eating. Tasting delicious food is a strictly secondary purpose. It is a nice benefit, but when push comes to shove, we can eat food that tastes terrible and still have a good functional mouth and healthy life. Putting flavor first is not doing the waistlines of this country any good, nor for that matter, our finer sense of taste.

Like an unhealthy priority on flavor over food, an overemphasis on can lead to unhealthy marriage.

Marriage is PRIMARILY a way for us to serve, and to express love. To both serve and love God and spouse. That love comes via service, and not self-fulfillment.

It sounds a bit austere and unromantic, it is important to have first things first.

Why

It is often asserted that we have no control over those whom we are attracted to and this may well be true. Right now, the kind of women who win contests like Miss America are a very different sort than those who won, even just 50 years ago. And this is quite different from the sort of women the ancient Greeks idolized or sculpted. In different times and different places, people have had different tastes as to whether to prefer fat or skinny, or well-toned, or any other number of adjectives. The question is, can these tastes be changed? If forums of single people are any indication, then the answer is no. People would rather be frustrated and lonely, than change their taste in the opposite sex. This is just as true of women as it is of men.

But it is equally true, that historically, sexual taste has shifted wildly.

What is unalterable for us, is easily shifting ground given time and the most meager of incentives. We do not appreciate the role of the foundation in keeping the structure secure.

Case in point, divorce used to be prohibitively hard to get. It took years and and extreme circumstances, and even then, it left a stigma. It was argued that there were a lot of people in bad marriages who had ought to be released from it. When there was suggestion that this would weaken the institution of marriage, it was laughed down. At most, this would be a few percent of people. This would not change how most people acted, it was thought.

The problem with this line of reasoning, is that it makes a classic blunder on a level with involvement in land wars in Asia. It fails to account for the marginal case. In most cases, the marginal case is not you at all. But every times a person on the marginal edge makes a decision, it progressively destigmatizes it for everyone else.

As I said concerning divorce laws, it was done with the best of intent. It was done, with fantastic and unassailable logic. Marriage was too steady a public institution to see change, it was thought. And yet, here we are with divorce at rates at ~50%, with increasingly large segments of the population not planning on marriage at all. What we can imagine happening is a very poor guide to what is possible.

Economists have found that when changing things, it is the marginal case the you must take into consideration. In so many ways, most of us reading this blog are the last ones to be affected, but by the time it gets to us, its momentum will be unfathomable.

Likewise, public welfare used to be solely for the use of families temporarily down on their luck, not unmarried mothers. It was argued, quite logically, that unmarried mothers should not be discriminated against. When it was suggested that this would lead to an increase in unwed mothers, that was seen as ludicrous – who would choose such a difficult thing for such a paltry sum? And yet, what do we have now? The most meager of incentives, has destigmatized this to the degree that some high schools have 1 in 7 female students pregnant.

My point here is not to discuss divorce law, nor welfare policy, but to point out the effect of changing incentives and stigmas.

If you care to read more, I strongly recommend an essay by Jane Galt, who made these points better than I could have.

But what is codified into law, has the stigma progressively removed from it – it comes to be seen as morally acceptable. What is accepted progressively becomes public taste.

In other words, unless we want to see a lot of heterosexual marriage replaced by homosexual marriage.

Marriage does matter and not just to the few percentage points that gay marriage would immediately affect. It is not the effect today that is worrisome. It is the effect 20, 30, 50 years from now. It will affect the institution of marriage, and even the meaning of what marriage itself is for.

Anything else, is kindly meant, but shortsighted.