A Dad Tells His Son That Unless He Can Do One Specific Thing, He Isn't Ready To Marry A Woman
Don't get married until you're prepared to do this one thing.
@the_guy_671 / TikTok A father on TikTok who goes by “The Guy” recently uploaded a video on the social media platform where he tells a joke through a sketch he performed with his son.
Even though it’s a joke that many people found pretty funny, it does have real-world implications, and it all started when his son told him that he was ready to marry “the one.” His father told him to say he was sorry, confusing him, and ultimately responding by saying no.
The dad told his son that until he can say sorry for no reason, he's not ready for marriage.
“Hey, until you can say you're sorry for no reason at all, you're not ready,” his dad told him.
Although the caption on the video reads “Sorry” and is immediately followed by a hashtag “#joke,” it says a lot about the way men view marriage, the women they’re preparing to spend the rest of their lives with, and the men themselves.
One man named Scott Stanley from the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) tackled a very interesting fact — that although men are more likely than women to push for marriage, it seems as though that number has lessened over the years.
“I believe that men resist marriage more than women primarily because they believe marriage requires a substantial increase in their behavioral commitment — and they don’t always feel ready for that transition,” he writes.
Stanley goes on to cite a study that was published in the 2002 report of the National Marriage Project, where men answered that they believed they could enjoy the benefits of marriage without actually having to be in one.
They also saw marriage as a means of allowing their partners the right to tell them what to do — a freedom they were seemingly unwilling to give up.
Naturally, however, these kinds of views are a little misguided, and on the opposite side of the spectrum, women are growing tired of their involvement with heterosexual partners.
Women are growing increasingly tired of being married to emotionally absent men.
The joke that The Guy tells seems to be a play on a tired trope that women are often upset with men for no reason, but what it might actually be is a sign of emotionally unavailable men. The Guy might be joking, but there are other men in the world that truly believe they are never in the wrong when women are upset with them.
That is why women all over the country are divorcing their husbands. Divorce lawyer Dennis Vetrano, known on TikTok as @drvlaw, claims that the number one reason women are getting divorced is because they are tired.
“I am seeing working moms doing it all,” he says in a video. “She's got the kids, she's got the groceries, she's got the laundry, she's got the meals, she's got the work—and by the way, she's making all the money and she's paying for the house and doing everything else.”
Men will shirk their responsibilities by going out with their guys or playing video games or doing literally anything else, “and women. are. Tired.”
You might ask, what do any of those things have to do with being emotionally available? Well, I’m glad you asked, because all of those things amount to an uneven balance of emotional labor and mental load.
Men may not think that these things involve a lot of emotional labor — but they do! The amount of effort put into these tasks translates into how much you care, so the next time you think “I didn’t do anything” when your wife is upset with you, you might actually be right for once.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor for YourTango who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics.