This chapter is for the ladies as I believe it is crucial, here at the outset, for all potential brides to disabuse themselves of the romanticized notion that men are warm, sensitive, feeling creatures who want to marry you because they’re in love, you complete them, you’re the blood coursing through their veins, the mustard on their wiener, or any of the other insipid, sentimental artifices Hollywood uses to suck millions of your gender into believing men are anything other than what they are – men.
Let’s try to keep one thing straight: the version of marriage foisted upon you by movies, television, and romance novels is a fabrication consisting of fictional characters and carefully crafted dialog fall designed to draw you into a contrived reality with the purposeful intent of making you believe your life isn’t nearly as interesting, exciting, or fulfilling as Sandra Bullock’s – which of course is true. The point being that the ideal males Hollywood creates DO NOT EXIST!
Truth be told, a man’s motivation for most everything he does and all decisions he makes in some way relates to sex. That being said, dig down to the root any sane man’s decision to marry, and you’re likely to find a penis.
Don’t be fooled. The penis is not just another run-of-the-mill organ charged with performing certain predetermined biological functions like the heart, pancreas, or metronome. Unbeknownst to medical science (and many women), the penis is an independent, free-thinking, parasitic life form that when aroused, assumes full neurological control of the host organism, causing it to embark upon a singular quest for (in a never more apt example of “tunnel vision”) the complementary organ of the opposite sex.
This should surprise no one. Since the beginning of time, women have been the solemn gatekeepers of that forbidden territory all men ache to enter. The whole dating/mating dance, in fact, is merely a process by which a woman culls the field to determine who holds the key to her garden of untold delights.
Going back to our Discovery Channel example, most mammals are hardly monogamous. In response to an evolutionary need to propagate their kind, males of many species, humans included, have a genetic – nay primordial – imperative to procreate.
In a pride of lions, for example, the females – who do all the hunting, caring for the young, laundry, etc. – far outnumber the males whose primary purpose is to fight with other males, nap, and mate with as many females he can. Add ESPN, and human guys aren’t all that different from male lions.
The problem is, men as a rule are lazy. Wooing scores of women and convincing them to have sex is not only time consuming and expensive, but exhausting. Enter marriage: what single guys perceive as the perfect opportunity to have as much sex as they want, but without all the work.
Unfortunately, just as men are lazy, so are they stupid.
In their teens and twenties, males have copious energy and ample time to seek out as much sex as their entry level salaries and stockpiles of bootleg Viagra will allow. In their early thirties, their seemingly insatiable carnal appetites begin to wane as other distractions like golf and fantasy football creep in.
In their mid to late thirties, as guys see the prime talent being siphoned off by the more energetic twenty year old crowd, they start to become comfortable with their expanding salaries and guts, thereby finding themselves far less motivated to put forth the effort necessary to keep pace with the much younger wolves.
It is at this point a man begins to entertain the notion of “settling down” and thus commences his search for that one special person who is not only willing to have sex with him, but to cook, clean, and behave in a manner that will lead his friends to believe he’s not gay. As long as she isn’t entirely unattractive and too similar in appearance to his mother, most any female with a pulse will do.
After he “settles,” a man will get the occasional urge to stray from his den and widescreen TV to rejoin the pack in their hunt, but unless a naked Penthouse Pet falls from the sky and lands in his lap, the effort required, coupled with the potential dire financial consequences, hardly seems worth the risk.
I’m reminded of the old adage which asks why buy the milk when the cow is free? (Or is it, why buy the cow when the milk is free? Or why milk the cow when the farmer’s daughter is free?) Regardless, getting married to a guy is like buying the cow. No more running out to the gas station at ten PM to score a fix.
A word should also be said here about chivalry.
Believe it or not, there are still those men who allow themselves to be conscripted into marriage out of a misplaced sense of duty.
There was a time not so long ago when a man got a woman pregnant, he did what was considered the honorable thing and married her – even if she was an incarcerated teenage heroin addict and he a 45 year old Star Wars figurine collector and part-time birthday clown.
Nowadays, people are far more sensible. There are those, however, who, having been seduced by the dark forces of fundamentalist religion, still consider abortion a sacrilege.
Regardless of the variety of religious brain damage from which you suffer, understand that pregnancy is a shaky foundation upon which to build a relationship, let alone a social institution.
Even if your man does ride a white horse, wear a glistening suit of armor, and polish his sword with the blood of heathens, ten days in a row of waking up in the wee hours of the night to feed a screaming infant, and he will quickly come to realize chivalry is indeed dead and certainly no reason to ruin his life.
By the third week, expect him to beg you for a divorce, drink himself into a coma, or sneak quietly away under cover of darkness to join the Taliban.
Put another way, all marriages based on “doing the right thing” are doomed to fail. As are those based entirely on love.
