I Don’t: When Marriage Is No Longer Beneficial To Women
It's hard to convince women to get married when the reasons not to outweigh the reasons to do it.
Deniz Cengiz, BenAkiba, Francesco Scatena | Canva My friend has been proposed to three times, and she’s turned down every single one. As a wealthy woman in New York City, it’s clear she has her pick of the litter. She’s strong, she’s beautiful, and she speaks five languages.
At first, I was baffled.
I was the type of person who could only be happy being married. Eventually, I had to ask her why she kept turning down these guys. I mean, they were well off. What’s the deal?
She shrugged and said, “I will sleep with them. I will date them. But let’s be real, marriage will exploit me. That ring is more of a chain than anything else.”
Truth be told, she might be onto something. More often than not, women who divorce once never want to remarry. Meanwhile, men who divorce are more likely to give marriage a second chance. This might be why…
The labor gap between men and women is huge.
The biggest reason why a lot of women are increasingly unwilling to marry deals with the labor gap. Women still do the majority of the housework, even after marriage, and even when they are the breadwinners of their house.
Men do about four hours of extra labor when they marry. Women, on the other hand, will do about 14 hours of additional work. This includes cooking, cleaning, and picking up after their men. Oh, and that also includes managing the man’s social life.
It’s not like women don’t complain about this. They do. Unfortunately, too many husbands tend to continue to ignore their pleas until divorce papers are served.
More often than not, husbands are shocked — not because they were unaware of the issue. Rather, they never expected their wives to actually stand up for themselves and leave. If wives take them back, they go right back to being a lazy slob.
Shocking to say, if a woman hears too many instances of this, she’s going to pass on being the mommy-bangmaid men want her to be as a spouse.
Since women are often expected to work, too, there are no labor trade-offs from the past.
In the 1950s, there was a far more even division of labor. Men went to work and they earned the entire paycheck. Women stayed at home, kept the place clean, and raised kids. These days, most men can’t afford that.
40 percent of all households have women as the top earners. Unlike life in the 1950s, women also can own their own homes, have their own bank accounts, and also go into most fields without worrying about being pushed out.
As of right now, the only real benefit that men can solidly offer women is fatherhood. Unfortunately, a lot of guys tend to bail on their kids — even after a ring was placed on their finger.
When you look at what old fashioned marriage used to offer, it made a lot of sense for women. Today? Not really. Women aren’t getting a weight lifted off their shoulders, contrary to what men may believe.
Well, it’s kind of surprising that women aren’t the ones going, “It’s just a piece of paper.”
There is a lot of risk for women, more so than what men may experience.
Don’t get me wrong. Men can be abused and they also can end up with their money stolen from them by the wrong girl. However, things get a lot worse with women. The risk is far higher for almost any abuse across the board.
Women earn less than men and often have to deal with the risk of marrying a man who will suddenly quit their job and try to live off the girl. They may end up dropping a career to be a housewife, only to be totally abandoned by the guy they married.
Or, we could also address the elephant in the room. Women are more likely to be physically abused, cheated on, or killed by their partners. Studies show that abuse often starts once the ring is on her finger. So, why would she put herself in a potential line of fire?
There’s no guarantee that her man will stick around.
Divorce is overwhelmingly initiated by women, and that’s true. However, there is an important point that is not brought up by people who note that it’s usually women who file: men often leave the relationship before they file for divorce.
If you’re female, you’ve heard those types of stories. The man who checked out of a relationship. The man who stays married because he doesn’t want to lose money, but cheats on his grieving wife with everything that breathes. The porn addict who stopped touching her ages ago.
In many cases, men like this are comfortable in their marriage because they’re getting free housekeeping, have their finances intact, and can keep up appearances. Women are miserable. So, they divorce because they are already left alone in the relationship.
Of course, this isn’t always the case.
I’ve personally heard of one man who had three kids that he personally begged for with his wife. Once the third was born, he stuck around for a year, then left to South America where he was never heard from again.
We later found out he married another woman without divorcing his American wife. He has three kids with her, too. Needless to say, we were all floored.
What I’m saying here is that most marriages from the olden days had a spouse that was at least somewhat present and could be relied on to stay. These days, that’s just not something women can trust.
Marriage makes it harder for women to leave men, especially with kids.
It’s a known fact that abusers tend to ask a woman for kids and marriage. This is by design. Kids and marriage are often treated as a way to break a woman’s legs so that she can no longer leave.
A mother who has four kids and a financially abusive spouse is going to have a very hard time leaving — even if she tries. Men who are abusive often will use kids as a pawn to control their wives.
Women are growing wise to the fact that having less paperwork makes it easier for them to pack up and leave. This is also the reason why many women are choosing to avoid having kids altogether.
Their fear of being controlled or extorted over kids is very, very real. And it’s one of the many ways a marriage can turn exploitative towards women.
Too many men’s attitudes towards women are toxic to the point that it turns women off from marriage.
The dating industry has an abusive relationship with women. After hearing that we basically shrivel up and die after 30, it’s very hard to convince a lot of us that we should pursue men.
I mean, if women are so horrible after a certain age, why should we bother locking a guy down? Wouldn’t he just leave? And don’t you think we are tired of being told we “chase the wrong guys” when things go wrong?
By the time most men are willing to settle down, women their age don’t have a reason to want to. And you know what? They’re right to feel that way. Men do not have a right to tell women who have been battered by a rigged dating game to keep trying if they don’t want to!
Most women end up facing serious exploitation and abuse for doing something as simple as finding a life partner. After a certain point, men only will have to themselves to blame when women just start saying no to marriage.
Ossiana Tepfenhart is a is a writer whose work has been featured in Yahoo, BRIDES, Your Daily Dish, Newtheory Magazine, and others.