[oldnemesis]

(02-14-2011 01:19 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

I'm only pointing out that if a woman cheats on you, and, again, it is very likely given the average woman in the USA today, then you can't divorce her without getting screwed over yourself.

My point was that you mentioned two irrelevant things together. Cheating is completely irrelevant to determine whether one is screwed during divorce or not, as you can divorce her, or she can divorce you whether anyone cheated or not.

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The terms almost always favor her, you will lose out no matter how you cut it. Either your kids, your paycheck, your existing earnings... etc. In fact, the most perverse aspect of today's marriage laws is that the more successful your marriage has been, in terms of how long it has lasted, the more you stand to lose and her to gain if you divorce. Fucked, no?

I don't understand what you say. In California and other community property states, for example, it is 50/50 split of everything gained during marriage - no matter how long your marriage lasted, or whatever. Hard to see how those terms would favor her, unless the guy was a moron who married a girl which did not want to contribute to the marriage in any way. In that case it is not a problem with legal system either - the law did not force him to marry that particular girl. Could you provide a specific example?

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Not in my experience. Wives get bored regardless of where they live. In fact, couples usually live where the wives want to live. Most men today don't even have the balls to ask their wife to quit her job for the kids or stay in the house or whatever. Most wives get exactly what they want, in terms of logistics, and she will still get bored.

What you're essentially saying that some dudes out there are pussies who cannot stand up for their interests, so they got screwed. This is true, but again this definitely doesn't mean there is something wrong with marriage itself. If one does not want to put any effort to protect his own interests, why would anyone else do? The adult world is tough place, and those people who are doormats will get screwed by everyone, including their families, spouses, employers and so on.

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Sexual faithfulness only matters to me insomuch it matters to her. If she insists on strict monogamy, but then grows bored and flighty and were to cheat on me, I would probably feel destroyed in that I wasted years of my life being monogamous to a women who ultimately lies to me (by cheating on me).

What's important is her integrity, not her actual sexual behavior. If she tells me she wants a commitment but is actually someone who would grow bored and move onto some other dude (like most women I've seen as they get older). Conversely, if she says "I don't care if we sleep with other people, as long as we can stay together" then I would find this just as appealing. I want an honest woman over anything else. (less than 1% of girls, perhaps?)

This is the main reason sexual faithfulness in term of "sacred promise" has no value for me, because it forces people to do things which are not natural to a lot of them. Comparing to that, a non-monogamous marriage does not force any of you to have sex with others, so it is much less restrictive.

Considering that integrity is more important for you than sexual faithfulness, I'd suggest making it straight to any lady you're considering for LTR that "I don't care if we sleep with other people, as long as we can stay together". Explain the same rationale as you posted above - that a lot of people are discovering every day that they cannot be faithful, so you don't want your relationship to fall into the same trap. You may be genuinely surprised how many of them would agree to that.

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You may think I'm overly negative, but I'm reporting you the facts as I've experienced them from other older men's lives I've seen firsthand. Less than 80% of the men I've talked to who are over 40 years old have never been divorced. What a shit deal.

The Census statistics says the divorce rate for the first marriage is roughly 50%.

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If mothers do such a good job, why are most people in this country so messed up in the dating scene? Why are white populations declining? This is all caused by a lack of proper rearing by the parents, and since women have more control over the children, it follows they are more to blame.

Using the same logic the fathers are the ones to blame as they surrendered all the control over the children education to women while limiting themselves to fishing, drinking and playing video games. For example, when I go to the kids playground in a public park, I'm typically the only guy here. And quite a few ladies mentioned that they would love it if their husbands also took a walk with kids, but they're always too busy or whatever.

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Really? So all of those divorced couples were never attracted to each other when they got married? Why did they get married in the first place?

There may be a lot of reasons why they get married. Peer pressure (esp. families), legal issues (green cards), financial issues, pregnancy and so on.

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I think you overestimate how much "value" can do for a relationship. It's not all games and power struggles (although most of it is). In the final analysis, you either have a good woman as your wife or a bad one. And there's nothing you can do about it.

The value balance is necessary element of a healthy relationship, but it is not the only element.

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Okay, you have a rich wife. In this case, my nanny argument doesn't hold. But it does apply to many successful men who earn more than their wives.

No, I found a wife which works a lot, and makes probably 70% of what I make; the rest comes from her spending time on taking care of me and our kids. None of us came from rich families, and by Bay Area standards we're as rich as top 20% of local population.
My point, however, is that she is what I was looking for. I did not marry a random girl from the street expecting her to make similar to what I do, and I've disqualified well over 500 girls before I found her.

Now why those successful men married the ladies who earn much less than them if this was something important to them? I guess, because their other expectations were not balanced, and they had to compensate for the imbalance in value.

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Obviously, you would need to do your research and weigh in the trade-offs. No country has a perfect situation. But if finding a good woman is important, then it's probably a smart alternative for most men.

I'd say if one has problems to find a good woman in their own cultural environment, it would be even more difficult in the different culture environment unless you know that different culture very well and you are into that. To give you an idea, it takes 2-3 years living here in US for a Russian to come to conclusion that our culture is so different from any Western culture that we are very unlikely to get a long-term healthy relationship with Westerns, no matter how good other qualities he or she would possess.

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She's not lying about her marriage. In the eyes of God and society, she is truly married. She simply would not be married through the state, so there would be no coercive element in the relationship.

Nope. In the eyes of the society you're only married if you possess the marriage certificate. Which means you went through a civil procedure required by law. Neither wedding nor church is needed. We got ours from a civic hall on our way to work, and it took 15 minutes. No chapels were involved, and we didn't even have a formal wedding. However we are still married in the eyes of the society, and I bet even your pastor wouldn't say we are single.

However if you don't have a marriage certificate, at least the government part of the society will not treat you as married. For example, your "wife" may be forced by the court to testify against you, which would not happen if you were really married; you'll have to pay estate taxes, you wouldn't be able to sponsor her an immigrant visa, or file taxes jointly and so on.

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If I donate sperm to a sperm bank, and a woman decides to have my children, would I be liable for child support?

Probably not, but legally it will not be your kid either. If she decides not to keep him and give him for adoption, there is nothing you can do. If she dies, the kid goes to adoption, not to you. Your opinion is legally irrelevant no matter how she raises her kid. And if she meets another guy and marries him, you can forget about ever seeing your kid again as no court would grant you any custody. If you are ok with all of this, you may as well marry a girl who has a very young (<2 years) kid from previous relationship, and avoid yourself a lot of trouble.

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Easy. Because she would love me.

This is similar to if let's say you're looking for a job, and saying how hard is to get one. When asked what you want, you say the job should pay no less than $10M a month. Of course there are jobs which pay that much, but your qualifications must be exceptional. However when asked about why would any company pay you such amounts, your answer is "because they would like me". Of course, there is a chance, but I'd rather bet on winning a jackpot, the chance is much higher.

Indeed, she may love you, but still marry an average Joe. As I have said in previous post, this is what typically happens. Same as the company might really like you, but they'll hire someone with more qualifications, or less demands. This is how real world works.

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I'm not counting on shit. I don't need a marriage and I don't want one if it means enslaving myself to a dying nation state.

This is fine as well - if you don't want to get married, nobody forces you to do so. You just need to be honest with yourself about that. The problem is not that marriage is wrong, or all local women are unfit to be married. The problem is that your expectations exceed your qualifications. Same as above: the problem is not there are no jobs in US. The problem is not even that there are no 10M a months jobs. There are. The problem is that you don't have qualifications to land such a job, which means your expectations exceed your qualifications.

What you can do is to say to yourself something like "I would only consider getting married when the value in relationship is very imbalanced. It is extremely unlikely that anyone of the similar value as mine would agree on those terms. This means I have to either work to add more value while keeping my expectations the same, or I have to accept the fact that I will never get married". Again, nothing wrong with that, especially if you're in early twenties.