How do ERE men attract women?

[IlliniDave]

I've heard a statistic that something like 80% of divorces are initiated by women. Dunno about the veracity, but in my pool of anecdotal observations the percentage would be even higher. That's a big reason why remarriage is not something on the table for me. So I'm sorta in a dilemma. I'm old fashioned enough that a full-up LTR sans marriage does not seem entirely proper, but why get married if it will likely make her less happy and more likely to bolster the 80% statistic? And in line with what 7wb5 said, if the only way I wouldn't be ripping her off is if she turns my pockets inside out for every last nickel she can extract--well, no thanks. Been there, done that, haha.

So I just take my own advice from above and try to make me the best me I can be and let the chips fall where they may. I can't say a bachelor's life is the ideal form of existence for me, but it is tolerable. If serial fwb was a thing, maybe that would be my happy niche.

[unemployable]

I flip it around. It's your burden to prove to me marriage would be worth all the accompanying encumbrances.

The longest relationship I've had broke up because she wanted to get married and I didn't. Last I heard she's married now, which thrills me because it implies she won't start stalking me. Although that was as of the early 2010s, so who really knows.

[7Wannabe5]

And in line with what 7wb5 said, if the only way I wouldn't be ripping her off is if she turns my pockets inside out for every last nickel she can extract--well, no thanks. Been there, done that, haha.

I believe what I (as always, semi-jokingly) implied was more along the lines of "whatever 15% increase in happiness would be worth to you" as opposed to "every last nickel she can extract." I also suggested a second available option of simply being less grouchy than the average bear. It has been my experience that many/most men who want to date me would rather carry pretty much the entire financial cost of supporting frugal me as co-pilot in their lifestyle vs. attempting to be just a bit less grouchy. Unfortunately, it might be a Catch-22, because maybe the joy of being as authentically grouchy as you feel is also dollar equivalent to 15% increase in happiness*. Dunno.


*Which would both be more than pretty much the entire financial cost of supporting frugal me as lifestyle co-pilot. IOW, it might be the case that it less painful to work a paid employment for the number of hours necessary to cover pretty much the entire financial cost of supporting frugal me for the typical middle-aged, semi-affluent American man vs. engaging in an activity such as "going to a therapist to get in touch with his negative emotions and their sources."

[Henry]

I flip it around. It's your burden to prove to me marriage would be worth all the accompanying encumbrances.

Makes me think of the 140 question quiz on football trivia in the movie Diner.

[DutchGirl]

I've heard a statistic that something like 80% of divorces are initiated by women. Dunno about the veracity, but in my pool of anecdotal observations the percentage would be even higher. That's a big reason why remarriage is not something on the table for me.

So 80% of the divorces are initiated by women. (Actually some other numbers out there from 2015 are 2 out of 3 or 70%).

But I think you should ask yourself what that means for your chance to have a successful marriage.

When *I* read this, the first thing I think is: oh, yet another way men let women carry the social and emotional burden in a relationship. The mental load it is also called. We have to plan the kids' agendas, we have to think about your mother's birthday, AND when both partners are unhappy in a marriage for whatever reason, sure, the woman in the relationship will take on the mental load of starting the divorce proceedings, with the guy secretly relieved that he doesn't have to initiate it.

Of course, I could be very wrong about this being the reason why the majority of divorces is initiated by women. But in your case, you seem to also believe that there is a specific reason why women initiate 70-80% of the divorces, and you apparently also believe that this will make it impossible for you specifically to find a woman, marry her (or not), and both be (more) happy ever after.
Maybe that is also not the truth?

[Frita]

Hm, are women still socially conditioned/trained to accept more responsibly for emotional labor in the relationship? Back in the 50s and early 60s, many women looked for a guy who would work and make enough money to support the family while mom look care of the home front. I grew up in a community like this with parents like this (until my dad died when I was in fourth grade) and my spouse’s career culture was like this (Oh, my, the more money some men make, the shadier they can behave.). There can be a lot of pretending and tolerating and making bad trades as @5W7 has mentioned. Racking men over the coals financially via divorce seems retaliation, coupled with some projection of personal responsibility IMO. If I have learned nothing else, it is to be proactive.

Marriage is an equal partnership with two responsible people who join forces to make something better. This takes work and effort. It takes radical honesty to say, “This isn’t working as well as it could and I feel *whatever feeling* because I need *whatever.* What do you think?” I personally believe getting divorced can be an easy solution to a long-ignored and often poorly defined problem. Divorce rates for subsequent marriages is even higher than first marriages. Why? Because people do not change behavior and expect different results with someone else (Denial is easy.). I am not saying that divorce is

BTW I am with @5W7 in preferring a widower from a childless (less complicated) and successful marriage, should I come on the market at some point. A previous divorce would be a yellow flag to understand what the guy had learned and changed about himself. I have my own money and own skills. I don’t need, nor want, to settle for some man child to take care of me.

[Biscuits and Gravy]

So, if you are a female, the odds that marriage will actually render you unhappier vs happier are pretty much 50/50. IMO, this is unlikely to change until more men learn how to be less grouchy

@Frita I think it probably is true that women are still trained to accept more of the emotional responsibility in a relationship, but we also have the freedom and responsibility to grow up, become self-aware, and decide whether we *will* accept a relationship with skewed loads.
Probably yet another a point in the “for god’s sake don’t get married before you’re 30” column, as I foolishly did.

I disagree about how marrying a childless widower would be ideal. People learn and grow a helluva lot from failed relationships and parenting. Bonus, you get extra kids to love and fret over without ever having to be pregnant.

[IlliniDave]

... But in your case, you seem to also believe that there is a specific reason why women initiate 70-80% of the divorces, and you apparently also believe that this will make it impossible for you specifically to find a woman, marry her (or not), and both be (more) happy ever after.
Maybe that is also not the truth?

Well the context was following a discussion about how marriage made women less happy than their unmarried counterparts--I just added a data point to support that assertion (the 80%). Nothing is impossible for me, my point was, why would I want to do that if it would make her 15% less happy statistically speaking?

[IlliniDave]

I believe what I (as always, semi-jokingly) implied was more along the lines of "whatever 15% increase in happiness would be worth to you" as opposed to "every last nickel she can extract." ...

Speaking from experience, it was every last nickel she could extract (was returning your tongue-in-cheek delivery). What makes you think I'm grouchy? That's one thing I've never been accused of by people that know me. Among my many past sins are not getting grouchy enough when she (in this case, several different shes of yore) were in the mood for an argument/verbal fight and I wouldn't take the bait.

[Henry]

Not getting married because divorce rate is like not buying a house because of foreclosure rate. It's a rationalization for a deep rooted fear. Maybe of failure or that you are unworthy being loved. That being said, people lose their homes and get dumped. Maybe best to insure that they both don't happen at the same time.

[Biscuits and Gravy]

I like your point, @Henry, but I feel like the analogy is off because we do have some control over a foreclosure (timely paying of house note). Maybe a better analogy would be: “Not getting married because of divorce rate is like not buying a house just because 100% of houses get struck by lightning and of those 50-70% burn down, leaving you adrift and destitute.”

[chenda]

That's why pre-nups are a thing.

[theanimal]

And one has no control at all over the quality of their marriage? I can't tell you which houses are going to get struck by lightning. I do notice couples around me who are not doing well or do things/say things that do not usually bode well for relationships. Divorce very rarely just happens in an instant, like a lightning strike.

The 50-70% divorce rate has been bandied about frequently on the forum recently. It's roughly 50% of all marriages that end in divorce. Those with 2nd, 3rd or more marriages divorce at a much higher rate. The greatest factors correlated with divorce are age at time of marriage, the woman's level of education, whether the couple is religious or not, and length of the marriage.
-Couples who marry under 25 years old divorce at a much higher rate than average.
-Couples where the woman has a bachelor's degree divorce at a much lower rate than average
-Couples that are religious divorce at a much lower rate than average
-Most divorces happen within the first 5 years and about 95% of all divorces happen within the first 10

The divorce rate for people who check all of those boxes is far, far lower than the average.

The top reason cited for divorce are issues concerning money.

I find it interesting that so many people here are fatalistic when it comes to marriage on a board where generally people value and believe in personal agency in all other realms of life

[unemployable]

Let's ask MMM what he thinks.

[IlliniDave]

Not getting married because divorce rate is like not buying a house because of foreclosure rate. It's a rationalization for a deep rooted fear. Maybe of failure or that you are unworthy being loved. That being said, people lose their homes and get dumped. Maybe best to insure that they both don't happen at the same time.

Speaking just for myself, it's more of a Pascal's Wager kind of thing. If I don't remarry what's the magnitude of the potential consequences? If I do remarry, what's the magnitude of the potential consequences? EREers as a group seem to be more attuned than normal to doomsday scenarios, and the most adverse consequences seem to come in the failed marriage quadrant in my reckoning. Is it just a deep-rooted fear, or a rather heartless risk assessment? I dunno. Having one divorce under my belt certainly biases my assessment. That marriage appears to decrease women's happiness is just one more straw on the camel's back. But like I mentioned, I strive every day to turn myself into the best me I can be, and let the chips fall where they may in terms of relationships. Identifying the ultimate form of a potential relationship is where the trickiness lies.

[7Wannabe5]

This takes work and effort. It takes radical honesty to say, “This isn’t working as well as it could and I feel *whatever feeling* because I need *whatever.* What do you think?”

I agree. However, good practice such as this may also lead to a "good divorce", whereas bad practice is will either keep you in a bad marriage and/or lead to a bad divorce. I worked very, very hard at saving my first marriage, so by the time we divorced, it was kind of like I had unknitted it back to the first bit of bad practice I had enacted in the relationship, which occured even before we officially started dating. I actually think that one of my primary relationship issues is that I possess a level of hubris that informs me that "I" can make it work no matter what. Like I think I am the Primitive Technology Guy of relationships. I was still thinking that maybe I could have made my second "marriage" work, but a series of recent encounters with my "ex" have finally and thoroughly laid that notion to rest. In fact, I'm now inclined towards no longer considering the relationship to have been my second marriage, since he clearly does not consider it to have been his 4th (I know, I know....). although he did wax a bit poetic on the theme of how I was only the 4th and the last woman he loved.

Anyways, the fact of the matter is that I have only on one occasion in my life dated with the clear intent of forming a long-term serious, monogamous,perhaps marital, relationship, but I was following the advice in a kind of regressive book that employed verbiage that kind of hypnotized you into thinking that what you wanted was a husband (David Deida's "Dear Lover" also has this effect.) The first man I dated following the advice in that book did try to put a ring on my finger within a few months acquaintance, but a few months later, I found out that the reason why he was acting so crazy about me was that he suffered from Bipolar 1, and he stopped taking his medication. Then he called me up to dump me on Christmas Eve, which was also the first time in my life anybody literally said 'I want to break up' to me (I've definitely been dumped by attrition) , so then after I related this to my younger sisters, for the entire holiday, the running joke was "My name is 7Wannabe5, and any man who would dump me must be totally crazy!" Then I met he-who-shall-no-longer-be-referred-to-as-my-second-"husband" on the rebound from that relationship, when I definitely was NOT following recommended husband-seeking-filtering behavior. I had sex with him on our second date, even though he told me he already had a girlfriend (while we were making out), and then we basically just kept having sex all the time for the next 4 years. It's not even like I made a choice to move in with him, but more like I never left the bed. However, I did at least make him dump the other girlfriend about a month in.

Speaking from experience, it was every last nickel she could extract (was returning your tongue-in-cheek delivery). What makes you think I'm grouchy? That's one thing I've never been accused of by people that know me. Among my many past sins are not getting grouchy enough when she (in this case, several different shes of yore) were in the mood for an argument/verbal fight and I wouldn't take the bait.

Oh, I was referring back to my original statement, so I meant my comments to be universal, not specific to you. However, it is probably the case that my own personal experience has led me to believe that the typical man who might conform to your phenotype would more likely be grouchy than not. Also, because you had issues with money in your marriage, I may have been projecting that you were still sensitive about that, like how I used to be a "biscuit hoarder" coming out of my first marriage where the issues were sexual. IOW, for the first few years after my divorce, I would have run like hell at even the hint that a man had a low sex drive, but time and "success" did away with that quite a number of years ago. So, on second thought, it is likely the case that you are over being reactive about your money issues in your marriage, because you have now achieved financial success on your own, so water under the bridge.

[mathiverse]

I find it interesting that so many people here are fatalistic when it comes to marriage on a board where generally people value and believe in personal agency in all other realms of life

The fatalistic attitude or not falls mostly along the lines of previously divorced or not.

[7Wannabe5]

It’s not that you don’t have agency. It’s that you at very best have only 50% agency. As a member of my divorce support group remarked, “You can’t play fetch with a dead dog.”

[theanimal]

Sounds like something worth checking before playing fetch . Granted, some dogs do die unexpectedly but as I mentioned above, there are often plenty of warning signs before that happens.

My point is that the stereotypical "ERE man" is likely someone who is introspective and interested in personal development across an array of fields. I have a hard time believing that domeone like that is likely to end up with someone who may be more akin to the norm, ie the opposite of that. Add in financial competency, a decreased emphasis on work and interest in improving relations, the ERE man is already far ahead of the average and better suited for a positive relationship. That's part of why I think the national statistics are irrelevant

[Ego]

The fatalistic attitude or not falls mostly along the lines of previously divorced or not.

Last night we had a big group here, one of whom is in the thick of a nasty divorce. It was a reminder of just how traumatic divorce is. Not exactly a death, but there seems to be some important overlaps.

As I listened to him recount moments from his marriage - moments that we witnessed - I found it interesting how his memory of them has changed over time. My guess is he is constantly ruminating over what happened and this continual re-remembering has changed the memories as a way to protect himself.

She certainly did some horrible things, but right now he seems to have convinced himself that he was nothing more than the victim and she the perpetrator. While it is possible that in time a more nuanced perspective will return, it is also possible - and I think more likely - that the altered memories will stick and he will have convinced himself beyond doubt that the divorce was something that happened to him, not something that they did together.

Of course, everyone was being kind and nobody wanted to be that person... the one who set him straight. So he will probably continue to believe what he needs to believe in order to function.

Human beings are fascinating creatures.