Eat, Pray, Cats

There are two competing narratives when it comes to women divorcing.  The first is the feminist narrative:  I don’t need a man! or A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle!  The other way to see it is in the context of women’s preference for serial monogamy with a divorce theft sweetener.  Divorce isn’t intended as a final act, but instead sets the stage for entry into an expected new and better relationship while collecting cash and prizes.

Surprisingly the feminist narrative is extremely popular in the manosphere.  The basic premise here is that men are dead weight to women, and that women receive nothing of value to being (some would even argue getting) married.  Not surprisingly, the language the men of the manosphere use when making this feminist argument often is boilerplate feminist.  For example, which of the following comments is from a man in the manosphere, and which is from a feminist explaining that marriage is bad for women?

The men are content. Anytime [women] ask them to pull their weight, they are the ones who piss and moan. All of my friends are tired of raising their man along with their children. Thus is life. If I could offer young women advice: Don’t get married. You’ll be better off living alone, doing what & when you want to, learn handy work yourself… or hire an electrician or carpenter because a husband will never get around to it.

and

‘Manliness’ is gone, it’s left the building. It’s even criminal. Women don’t really want that, or need it. It’s useless. They’ll either move back in with the parents after they get the sperm or they’ll move into subsidized housing. To be brutally frank, not even Game will keep your wife in these circumstances. A woman with two small kids doesn’t really want to be gamed. All she knows is there is some dude who she had kids with and all he does is come home from work and plops down into the couch like a sack of potatoes. She’d rather be alone or move back in with her parents.

…It’s ordinary men – most men – that are the new ball and chain.

Likewise, blogger Whiskey offered the following rebuttal to my post Do women want to get married<.htma>?

I would submit however that the test of Dalrock’s assertion would be Britain and the Scandi Nations. There, marriage collapsed almost overnight. Britain went from the land of Mrs. Miniver to that of Clockwork Orange, and then straight to Harry Brown, in about three generations. Over 50% of White births in Britain are illegitimate, if anything Hindu/Muslim births are propping up the national legitimacy rate. In the Scandinavian nations the situation wrt legitimacy is even worse.

I’d say that women want a variety of things. When given a choice: marriage and nuclear family, vs. sexy Alpha guys and kids with them even as single mothers, they choose the latter at least over half. At least. After all, what is better, a loser beta male who is a good father and provider but unsexy and with no harem, or the excitement and domination and sexual thrills of an Alpha and bearing his kid? Particularly when there is no need for a provider, the government plus a woman’s own earnings can substitute for that.

Like it or not, legitimacy and the nuclear family are ending. The nuclear family is dead, dead, dead in places like Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and even the Netherlands. Certainly in Britain. Dying rapidly here.

So I guess the matter is settled.  Both feminists and men in the manosphere are convinced that women no longer need men, and they specifically no longer want or need husbands or their children’s father in the household.

However the data and our understanding of female psychology both contradict this widely and deeply held belief.  Whiskey claimed that we could see proof of his thesis in the stats for Britain and Scandinavia;  yet Lavazza offered a link to statistics which contradicted this in Sweden:

Whisky: You’d better look at the percentage of children living with both their parents rather than OOW births. In Sweden 90 % of 1 YO live with both their parents. For 17 YO it is 60 %.

http://www.scb.se/Pages/TableAndChart____151501.aspx

I was able to find stats from the UK which dispelled the claim that women there no longer feel compelled to either marry or at least do the next best thing before having children.  See Table 5 from This report from 2003. For whites in the UK, just under 60% (58.9%) of babies were born to married parents. If you add in cohabiting parents it is just over 85%.  I also found this report from 2011, appendix table A1 (last page). 84.2% of all women (all races) in the UK had ever married by the age of 40 in the last time period they have data for (2004-2007).

Previously I’ve shared data proving that a woman’s likelihood of divorce tracks closely with her perceived opportunity to remarry.  As women grow older their chances at remarriage drop dramatically, and so does coincidentally their likelihood of divorcing. This is reinforced by the findings of the AARP survey.  They found that a woman’s age at time of divorce correlated with her likelihood of dating:

Their age at the time of divorce also impacts dating, especially among women.  Eighty‐eight percent of women in their 40s dated (35% did before the divorce was final), while 79 percent of women in their 60s and older did the same (13% did before the divorce was final).  (Page 39)

But for middle age and older women, their post divorce romantic lives are nothing like they are in the divorce fantasies:

Almost 9 in 10 men (87%) dated after their divorce, compared to 8 in 10 women (79%)…  Among those who dated after the divorce, more than half of men (54%) but fewer women remarried (39%). (Page 39)

Many women, especially those who have not remarried (69%), do not touch or hug at all sexually. An even larger majority of women who have not remarried do not engage in sexual intercourse (77% saying not at all), in comparison with about half of men (49%) who have not remarried.  (Page 6)

The divorce fantasies themselves offer a strong indicator that women aren’t divorcing with the hopes of living their lives alone.  Divorcées want the next stepping stone on the path of serial monogamy.  Otherwise, why is it nearly universal that the heroine divorcée ultimately winds up either remarried or with another worthy man promising commitment?  Eat, Pray, Cats wouldn’t have been a bestseller or a box office hit.  Likewise, it isn’t an accident that Single in the Suburbs ended with the divorcée receiving a profession of love and commitment from a secret multimillionaire hunky handyman.  Even Lorraine Berry ended her tale with an assumption of lifelong commitment.  I’ll also go on the record predicting that a sequel to How Stella Got Her Groove Back titled How Stella Died Alone With Her Cats wouldn’t have the same panache.

Equally telling is how far the women in the “true life” divorce fantasy stories have to stretch the truth in order to make their story fit the mold.  In EPL, the heroine met a hunky exotic successful import/export businessman.  In real life he is in his late 50s and nearly 20 years her senior. The dashing businessman of the book and movie now asks her permission before he spends money:

Elizabeth Gilbert’s husband rang her from Vietnam and asked, “Do I have permission to buy a 7,000-pound marble Buddha?”

Her answer: “You don’t need permission, ever.”

It gets even more romantic, the reason the old man proposed is he wanted to live in her house but he needed a visa to enter the US.  The real Stella story is arguably even worse.  Unlike in the movie, the hot young Jamaican stud the divorced author married was visibly gay, and ironically she later accused him of marrying her for a visa as well.  Adding injury to insult, the author was then forced to pay him spousal support even though he had signed a prenuptial agreement.

If the celebrated success stories are so brutal, one can only wonder how bad the failures or even just ordinary endings must be.  Certainly the AARP study gave us a grim look at this.  Surprisingly however this is generally a topic researchers lack interest in.  Finding data on what I’ve coined as post marital spinsterhood is very difficult.  A few months back I found some data from the US Census SIPP tables on marriage and divorce.  They break their data out by race, and the following data is all for White Non Hispanic women.  One key benefit of looking at a single race is that it avoids shifts which might be due to changing racial demographics.  I chose to look at White Non Hispanic data because White women are amongst the most likely to remarry after divorce.  There is evidence there that post marital spinsterhood amongst white women is indeed on the rise:

While this isn’t a huge jump, it does confirm the general trend.  Even though the latest data is from 2009 the bulk of the divorces for the women then in their 50s would have happened decades earlier.  Since we know that remarriage rates for women are declining over time and with age and women are marrying and divorcing later now than in the past, there is every reason to expect that these figures will look even worse for women divorcing today when they are in their 50s.

One startling thing I noticed when looking at the data is that the percentage of women who have ever divorced drops dramatically as the age brackets increase.  Either this is an artifact caused by past low divorce rates, women who ever divorced leaving the country in droves, or women who ever divorced dying at significantly higher rates than women who haven’t divorced.  I don’t have any data disproving a mass divorcée expatriation, but my gut tells me this isn’t the case.  Looking at the shape of the curves over multiple points in time it appears that this isn’t an artifact of past low divorce rates either:

The curve appears similar for men.  Ever divorced men also drop out of the older age brackets.

This entry was posted in Aging Feminists, Choice Addiction, Divorce, Feminists, Grey Divorce, Post Marital Spinsterhood. Bookmark the permalink.

132 Responses to Eat, Pray, Cats

  1. G.L. Piggy says:

    Dalrock,

    It’s a good post, but I don’t think that what Tim wrote about manliness being dead was of the same vein as what the woman commented on your previous post. Tim was arguing that women viewed manliness as providing no value-add to their lives. I don’t think it’s exaggeration to say that most women increasingly feel that way about men and that this has caused marginal relationships to not become marriages.

    [D: I think my characterization of his frame is accurate, and his use of feminist boilerplate language is undeniable.]

  2. Brendan says:

    What do you make of the comments of (some) post-menopausal women in your other thread on this saying that once they left menopause their desire for men dropped away permanently. If this is true for a portion of women, wouldn’t that also be a driver for low remarriage rates for post-menopausal women?

  3. Dalrock says:

    @Brendan

    What do you make of the comments of (some) post-menopausal women in your other thread on this saying that once they left menopause their desire for men dropped away permanently. If this is true for a portion of women, wouldn’t that also be a driver for low remarriage rates for post-menopausal women?

    I think this is primarily rationalization hamsters in overdrive. It may be true that their sex drive decreases, but their overall desire to be in a marriage or at least a marriage like relationship doesn’t seem to go away. Otherwise we wouldn’t see such a dramatic drop in divorce rates as women grow older. We hear over and over that divorce is driven by men dumping older wives for a younger model, and that women see having a husband later in life as a burden. If this were true, there is no reason these women wouldn’t continue divorcing as they aged. One would in fact expect divorce rates to increase as women aged. That divorce rates drop so dramatically for older women tells us that they must really value being married after all.

    Another marker is in women’s fiction. I’ve never heard of a genre where women divorce and live happily ever after caring for their cats and doing crafts. If there were a market for such stories I have no doubt Lifetime would be full of them. What we see instead are divorce and remarriage stories or widowhood and remarriage stories. Also note that the news stories selling divorce to older women always end with remarriage or something similar.

    Lastly, the continued traffic to the page you referenced should be all the proof one needs. It was a throwaway post, but is now the all time most visited page on this blog (by far). Women continue to come to that page several times a week and explain how done with men they are. If they were really done with men, they wouldn’t be finding that page in droves and writing passionate rebuttals. We also wouldn’t see the level of hyperbole that we do from the women attempting to refute it claiming that older women have to fight off the suiters. I touched on this when rolling out Dalrock’s law, but a recent commenter made a similar ridiculous assertion:

    Sorry, but looks do matter to women. I also disagree that men age better than women. At least not the women I know. Meanwhile, these are not “frat boys” these women acquaintances and friends of mine are dating. These are guys close to them in age (in some case a few years younger), and these guys are successful, without exception. So they’re not looking for “sugar mamas.” Case in point, my mom has a widowed friend who is 79, is a complete knockout (she goes to a gym six days a week) and is about to marry a doctor.

  4. CL says:

    Oh, now I get to laugh about the 79 year-old “complete knockout” all over again! That was classic.

  5. MikeDiver says:

    I have 6 sisters. All of them are divorced or widowed. One is living long term with a boyfriend. Four or five are post meopausal (54 and older). The one living with her boyfriend and the youngest (mid 40’s) are still interested in men (and I think sex). Only one of the post menopausal are interested in men, and that one has only the slightest interest, and is taking no action on theat interest. Their lack of interest may be sour grapes on their part, but it doesn’t look that way after years of observing them closely. They seem utterly content in a world where men do not impinge on their lives. They seldom to never talk about their exes, and have only female friends. Now that they are retired, they would hardly notice if the entire male population disappeared overnight.

    As much as I like the idea of vengance against the evil/feminist women being they become single old ladies with cats, I think in real life the crazy old ladies with cats are completely content with their lot. This assumes of course that she had the marriage, kids, and divorce theft first. This does not mean that I disagree with the opinion that the middle aged divorcee (35 to 45) is not indulging in a fantasy of divorce and being pursued by glamorous hot studs and being treated like a young girl again prior to the divorce. I think this is the fantasy society sells them and which they are disabused of only after the fact. But, by the time they reach 55 they are very content without men.
    I know of no men of any age that seem content to life without women, or should I say without sex. (Maybe I should cruise through the nursing homes and ask the very old guys if they are still interested)

  6. Ray says:

    The doctor must have been retired and 85.

  7. deti says:

    I don’t care if her abs are washboard tight and has 5 % body fat. In no universe I know of is a 79 year old woman a “complete knockout”.

  8. Celeste says:

    I’m not able to come up with a reason for the decline in “ever divorced’s” as a percentage past a certain age. Divorcee expatriation and early death seem unlikely, so what gives? Maybe I’m missing something.

    [D: The only logical answer is much higher mortality rates (around 2x). We hear a great deal about this for men following divorce, but I don’t recall ever hearing about it for women. Yet the data is very strong.]

  9. greenlander says:

    Interesting post, Dalrock.

    I like how you make so much effort to substantiate your claims with data. There is so much anecdotal “data” in this sphere of blogs that it’s refreshing to see actual data.

  10. CL says:

    I think in real life the crazy old ladies with cats are completely content with their lot. This assumes of course that she had the marriage, kids, and divorce theft first.

    This is the key. The most batshit crazy people I’ve encountered in my life have been over-50, never married, no kids, animal substitute women.

  11. Opus says:

    As you mention the UK I would like to say that I have never at any age observed any great desire by (middle-class) women here to marry, at least not me. Some do, of course, and they are the ones who on divorce promptly remarry. Others go EPL and return from Algiers, or wherever, with a man usually called Mohamed and young enough to be their son. The men are out of place here, and people laugh at these women, but behind their backs.

    I am put in mind of an acquaintance; a very senior person in the medical profession. I knew his present wife (successful in her own right) before they married, and we would sometimes have a coffee together. I bumped into her one day and congratulated her on her forthcoming nuptials. She thanked me, then commented, that her husband to be ‘is not as handsome as you Opus’. What could she be implying? Does it really just come down to money?

  12. Anonymous Reader says:

    Looking at the curves for divorces, I’m struck by one obvious fact and one subtle.

    Obvious fact: someone who is 70 years old today was 40 years old in 1981. That person was almost certainly married in their mid 20’s, i.e. around 1965, and thus simply missed the divorce revolution. Thus the curve is not a surprise.

    Subtle fact: the leading edge of the baby boom was born in 1946 – those people are 65 today. The leading edge was not as prone to divorce as those a few years younger, plus the bracket 60-69 includes people born during WW II who also are likely to have missed the divorce revolution. So the mean of divorce numbers in the 60-69 age bracket straddles two different groups of people, Boomers and non Boomers, and those groups have different divorce patterns.

    There could be higher mortality among the divorced, but frankly a cultural and demographic explanation is simpler: people over 65 are from “old America” where divorce was rare, people 65 and under are from “new America” where divorce was and is more common. As time marches on, the curves you show will shift to the right, likely in 20 years we will see a monotonically increasing curve.

    Of course, we must take “never divorced” numbers with a grain of salt – if one never marries, one never divorces. Cohabitation will skew this data.

  13. Dalrock says:

    @Opus

    As you mention the UK I would like to say that I have never at any age observed any great desire by (middle-class) women here to marry, at least not me.

    I think this is a classic case of watching what women do instead of listening to what they say. Would you ever have guessed that 85% of all women in the UK had married by age 40? This is for all races, and I presume for white women in the UK it would be close to the US figure of 90%. This isn’t to say that 85% of current 20 something women in the UK will be able to marry by age 40, but for the generation of women you know (if I’m understanding you correctly) 85% already did. These are incredibly high numbers for an institution women are supposedly no longer interested in.

    Some do, of course, and they are the ones who on divorce promptly remarry. Others go EPL and return from Algiers, or wherever, with a man usually called Mohamed and young enough to be their son. The men are out of place here, and people laugh at these women, but behind their backs.

    Note that even in your experience both groups of women find a new man, with the latter group digging deep enough status wise to make themselves the object of ridicule. Status matters a great deal for women. They would seem to be making the calculation that it is less embarrassing to be laughed at for bringing home a low status foreign man than to be laughed at for being without a man at all.

  14. Dalrock says:

    @Anonymous Reader

    Obvious fact: someone who is 70 years old today was 40 years old in 1981. That person was almost certainly married in their mid 20′s, i.e. around 1965, and thus simply missed the divorce revolution. Thus the curve is not a surprise.

    I think this could be part of the story, but it clearly isn’t the full picture. The 1996 data shows 35% of women then in their 50s had ever divorced. 15 years later these women are in their 70s. They were only 5% less likely to have ever divorced by their 50s than the women who are younger than them.

    Of course, we must take “never divorced” numbers with a grain of salt – if one never marries, one never divorces. Cohabitation will skew this data.

    The percentage of never married white women of the age brackets we are talking about are extremely small, single digits.

  15. deti says:

    For me, the main takeaway is this: Women’s post-divorce lives and remarriage prospects are considerably bleaker than those of men. Women are less likely to have post-divorce sex lives than divorced men. Women are less likely than men to remarry after divorce. Women are less likely to form romantic attachments after divorce.

  16. imnobody says:

    I am a loser. My gf is only 30 y.o. If only could I have a 70-y.o knockout… That’s a hottie.

  17. greyghost says:

    I think in real life the crazy old ladies with cats are completely content with their lot. This assumes of course that she had the marriage, kids, and divorce theft first.

    This is the key. The most batshit crazy people I’ve encountered in my life have been over-50, never married, no kids, animal substitute women. These are quotes from two different people and is the basis of what a real marriage strike by men really is. the phrase childless spinsterhood comes to mind and is really important. The most affected old spinsters of formerly married types are the childless ones. For an MRA type that really is seaky to be the stick in the culture war against men a woman has to be pushed beyond the age of having a healthy child. And also not entitle to receive payments from some sap or the government. It’s not spinsterhood but childless spinsterhood accompanied with finacial stress of having to produce for herself to survive.

  18. Anonymous Reader says:

    Obvious fact: someone who is 70 years old today was 40 years old in 1981. That person was almost certainly married in their mid 20′s, i.e. around 1965, and thus simply missed the divorce revolution. Thus the curve is not a surprise.

    I think this could be part of the story, but it clearly isn’t the full picture. The 1996 data shows 35% of women then in their 50s had ever divorced. 15 years later these women are in their 70s.

    Dalrock, 50 + 15 = 65, right? Half of the 50 – 59 cohort of 1996 is in the 60 – 69 cohort now, right? Assuming uniform distribution across the 10 year age bracket, of course. So look at the data point for age 50 – 59 in 1996, and look at the age 60 – 69 data point for age 60 – 69 in 2009. See how the 2009 curve is bulging up? That’s going to continue as the baby boom ages. Eventually, the 70+ data point will move upwards as well, for data gathered in 2015, etc. No mystery. Just the ongoing march of the Boomers, and their effects upon everything and everyone around them.

    They were only 5% less likely to have ever divorced by their 50s than the women who are younger than them.

    [D: It will be interesting to see what happens in the next 10 years. Either way, there is an undeniable pattern of accelerated mortality. Look at the 1996 data point for women in their 50s, and compare this with the 2004 data point for women in their 60s. It isn’t exactly 10 years, but this is essentially the same cohort 10 years later. The percentage of women ever divorced goes down, even though there are presumably more divorces which occurred in the 10 year period. Maybe one of my readers has a background in life insurance underwriting and can tell us what the life insurance companies know. That would be pretty definitive.]

  19. Opus says:

    @Dalrock

    I think that in the UK one has to look at class rather than race (and as I said I was speaking of the middle classes). Marraige seems to carry on as normal with the working-classes – frequently with the children acting as Bridesmaids and Pageboys.

    I was perhaps rather puzzled by my own experiences, as I am supposed to be in the category of people who are desirable to women, but beyond short-term flings, I clearly am not nor ever have been. Of course it could be the case that I am just attracted to difficult, promiscuous, ambitious, financially-secure women of an independent character, and my last couple of romantic interests have been childless single-women in their early forties – and let me add that both were good-looking (I mention that as one of them went EPL – and keen to tell all about it – though not the numbers involved, that it involved financial payments or that the boyfriend she boasted of was already history – all the advantages of an ex(otic) boyfriend and none of the disadvantages inherent in bringing him here, which she didn’t).

    For women who go EPL, having a younger man sends a message to other women (and men too) that they are still desirable – after all a man in his mid twenties is getting it up for her (even if an EU passport is the prize and whatever the financial compensation). I also suspect that British women will tolerate a lot of romance from an arab which would sound absurd, and with which they would not tolerate coming from a Native Briton – we are not supposed to be romantic and Game (read, Indifference) seems to be a national characteristic.

    I think your last paragraph (in reply) is most perceptive. The calculus seems to be that having an English male of a similar status, is worse than having a foreign male on lower status, because to marry a man of similar status reveals that you are no better than he, (you’ve had to settle for less than the Hunky Millionaire Handyman) whereas by going EPL, one avoids any proper comparison. It is a way too of circumventing class, for as soon in England as anyone, man or woman, opens their mouth you know everything about them – I am not sure whether this is or is not so in the USA.

  20. Anonymous Reader says:

    [D: It will be interesting to see what happens in the next 10 years. Either way, there is an undeniable pattern of accelerated mortality.

    Are all the data sets equivalent? That is, are the sample sizes big enough, and obtained in the same way? Is the sample size representative, or could it be skewed in some manner?

    Considering how the shift from land line telephones to cell phones is affecting political polling, I think it is reasonable to look at how the data were obtained, and see if some artifacts are being created in that process. I’m not saying that is the case, but I am wondering if it could be.

    i have one bit of anecdote to offer, although it is rather morbid. From what I have been told by people who work with alcoholics, women alcoholics tend to die at younger ages than men, due to physical / metabolic differences. If some number of divorcees take to hitting the bottle in their 30’s or 40’s, they might not make it very far past 60. No idea of the validity of this in the aggregate.

    Also it’s been a while since I looked at stress / depression effects on mortality, but I do recall that divorce could have as great an effect on a person as a death of an immediate family member in terms of reduced lifespan.

    [D: It is always good to question data. But I noticed a similar drop off of divorced women in the full census data as well. Maybe that was the boomer trend you pointed out though. I’m fairly confident that there really is something here, but if anyone can help us fill in the blanks with data (either way) I’d love to see it.]

  21. grerp says:

    Anecdotal, but I’ve seen a number of women bounce back after divorce recently when I would have assumed they would have been down for the count for awhile or permanently (esp. having read blogs in the manosphere). Maybe not bounce back married, but bounce back “new guy’s paying some or most of the bills.” These are women my age, about 40, and none of them were gorgeous even in the day. One of them is quite heavy and not even pretty (quite sociable and nice, though), and she started dating the same month she signed the divorce papers (employed, seems kind and decent from her description) . Most (all?) of the men are divorced, but none of them are cave dwellers or convicted felons, and they are all employed.

  22. flyfreshandyoung says:

    To further back up your claim of divorce as serial monogamy, Dalrock, and I think this was from an earlier post that I can’t remember the name of, there is a pretty significant decrease in divorces after something like 55 years old. You just don’t hear about divorces from people in that age group as often as you do in the 35-50 cohort.

    By that time, I would hazard most women contemplating divorce have finally recognized that they are no longer very attractive. Especially once they hit 60. They decide to stick around because it is safer, and menopause becomes an excuse/facillatator towards no longer even pretending to want to have sex with the husband.

    As much as I don’t like to think about it at all and wish I didn’t know, period, some of my older married relatives are like teenagers the way they go after it, so I really don’t believe the menopause shtick.

  23. greyghost says:

    Don’t kid yourself grerp “(quite sociable and nice, though),” that right there is a huge part of the appeal any woman has.

  24. Unamused says:

    I was led to believe there would be cats.

  25. Buck says:

    @
    (quite sociable and nice, though)
    Quick story; was at a BBQ this summer, about ten 35+yo career gals were there also, all nice looking, none “hot”, all with great careers, all single, never married. I was the grill master and they were at a nearby table drinking wine and ranting about men. As I listened I could have told them why they are still without a man…they are bitches!
    One gal was far homelier than the rest, but she was funny, asked me if she could help with the cooking, helped with the clean up, had a quick wit…was nice. I’m married, but if I were not, and I were going to hit on any of these assembled gals, the plain Jane nice girl was the only one who interested me.

  26. Lavazza says:

    “The most affected old spinsters of formerly married types are the childless ones. For an MRA type that really is seaky to be the stick in the culture war against men a woman has to be pushed beyond the age of having a healthy child. And also not entitle to receive payments from some sap or the government. It’s not spinsterhood but childless spinsterhood accompanied with finacial stress of having to produce for herself to survive.”

    This.

  27. AK says:

    Dalrock,

    Couldn’t you attribute the lower divorce rate in older couples as a function of men dying earlier, 5-7 years from what I have read, than their wives? If husbands as a group are also older than wives a group, it would make sense that if Jack dies at 67 and Jane is 62 that the divorce simply isn’t going to happen. Maybe the lower rate is simply a result of women waiting 5-7 years for the husband to die so that she will get everything and the oh-so-exalted status of a widower. No point in a messy divorce if you can suck it up for a few years.

    [D: This makes some sense, and I have no doubt it is in play to some degree. However, the trend is very smooth and starts off quite young. Women who are in their late 30s are less likely to divorce than in their early 30s, who are less likely to divorce than women in their late 20s. In the US it even holds that women in their late 20s are less likely to divorce than women in their early 20s. This downward trend extends out to the oldest brackets. It isn’t that we see a sudden drop off in divorce just before a mortality spike in husbands. Check out the data to see what I mean.]

  28. Anon says:

    I’d like to see some more adaptations of chick-lit titles!

    Eat, Pray, Cats
    How Stella Died Alone With Her Cat

    What else?

    Bridget Jones: Diary of a Lonely Cat Lady ?

  29. Lavazza says:

    Here’s an old career woman (chief of police) who’s shacked with an ex-con (now recent con).

    Google translate.

    http://arbetarbladet.se/nyheter/gavle/1.4204281-polischefen-en-sakerhetsrisk-
    http://arbetarbladet.se/nyheter/gavle/1.4205317-polisen-fann-knark-i-polischefens-bostad

  30. Sweet As says:

    One thing that I point out to my 30-something and older single friends is that they are likely going to have to date older, which may also mean giving up on things that they might have wanted.

    Dating an older man means that you will get marriage and stability. You might even catch a particularly wealthy older man, which is “even better.”

    But, you will not get children (in most cases). And, you will not get a lot of respect (you will be seen as a gold-digger). And, you will not get everything eventually in the will (the kids from previous wife will make sure of that).

    You also have to realize that he will die before you. it likely won’t be while you are still young. You stay married until he dies, you might loose the “gold digger” title, but you’ll be in your 60s and 70s and you probably won’t be getting your groove back. Or, if you do, it has to be with older men again. I’ll likely still be trucking along with my husband, who is about my age. Because, he’ll probably die in his 90s. Like me.

    That being said, I don’t think it’s always a woman’s fault for this. There is a measure of just being unlucky. But, for most of them it was either being bat-shit crazy or being too damn picky. And for most of those, it was too damn picky.

    Heck, even now, they are too damn picky. “what was wrong with him? he’s awesome!” and they are like “oh, yeah, he’s not that lean.” Well, you are 20 lbs overweight yourself, what the heck are you thinking? he’s a catch. a serious, honest to goodness catch, and a guy YOUR AGE who is saying he doesn’t want to date someone under 30. CATCH HIM YOU STUPID WOMAN.

    Usually, he’s caught by a really nice 27 yr old who is not 20 lbs over weight and doesn’t mind that he’s only 10% body fat and not 6%.

    For serious. Some people need to be honest about this stuff.

  31. Dmajor7 says:

    @flyfreshandyoung says:
    December 15, 2011 at 9:10 pm

    What about this then?

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2063430/The-growth-silver-separations-Divorce-rate-60s-surges.html

    [D: Media hype. I’ve addressed this here.]

  32. Krakonos says:

    Whisky: You’d better look at the percentage of children living with both their parents rather than OOW births. In Sweden 90 % of 1 YO live with both their parents. For 17 YO it is 60 %.
    Culture even 17 years ago was different. Still some signs of old times. 90% today barely means 60% in two decades.

    Lavazza and Darlock are trying to extrapolate future from previous human behavior in our society but Whiskey is trying to identify current changes. The former is OK but the problem is there are changes in very basics of our society’s structures. So it may (or may not) have impact on the system we cannot even imagine. It is beyond our life-long experience.
    When you look at societies around the globe you can find some, where there is no permanent marriage contract or even recognized paternity. So it is definitely possible we all will live in a world Whiskey has described very soon. With all its implications.

  33. Lavazza says:

    Dmajor: One commenter got it right:

    “Maybe the divorce rate is higher amongst the over-sixties because more of them actually got married.”
    – Haya Malka, London, England, 18/11/2011 23:48

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2063430/The-growth-silver-separations-Divorce-rate-60s-surges.html#ixzz1ggvyZnGh

  34. Lavazza says:

    Krakonos: Cohabitation as been big in Sweden for many decades now. Only a minority of OOWs are to single mothers not cohabitating with the father. Sweden has excellent statistics, but nobody can ever be sure if there is a trend going away from the current situation and how that trend will play out eventually.

  35. Lavazza says:

    The graph for 2007 is not different from 2010 (what I can see), so change is not fast at least.

    For statistics many years back see the Excel.

    http://www.scb.se/Pages/TableAndChart____279893.aspx

  36. Lavazza says:

    Percent of children 0-19 living with their single mothers 1991-2006:

    11
    13
    17
    16
    15
    14
    17
    16

  37. Twenty says:

    Women continue to come to that page several times a week and explain how done with men they are.

    Just in passing, isn’t that isomorphic to “women continue to come to that page several times a week and explain how incredibly unlucky a man would have been to have married them”?

    These women really need to get together with the “man-up”/”no-good-men” brigade and get their stories straight.

  38. Krakonos says:

    @Lavazza
    I see huge changes in culture. And culture influences society and vice versa. There is some inertia and feedback. So it is very hard to predict long term consequences. And I am saying the past and current data (“short-term” past counted in decades only) cannot help here due to problems I described above.
    I do not have better and clearer data than you. I am only trying to estimate output from what I know about similar events in past and actions I observe around. My prediction is closer to Whiskey’s and includes slow and monotonous decline of the West.

  39. Lavazza says:

    Krankonos: But there is a difference between “is happening/has just started happening” and “will happen”. For the first it is possible to have make comparison to the situation 1-3 years ago and see if there is a change or an acceleration in change. And at least I thought the discussion was about children growing up without their fathers in Scandinavia. If the discussion is about something else I am not sure if I can help.

  40. mjay says:

    I think these data are somewhat deceptive – I would love to see a breakdown by education level and income.

    Some data I have seen trend towards a pattern of skewed statistics for men with incomes between $100-$300K – those men, upon divorce seem not to remarry as often as men with lower incomes. Likewise, women not remarrying in their 40s-50s may indicate the lack of available men 5-10 years older than them due to death or those men’s preferences for even younger women.

    The aggregate data may not be representative of distributions of remarriage frequency across different income and education levels for divorced men and women.

  41. Krakonos says:

    Part of the discussion was about single mothers. But not particularly in Scandinavia but rather general trends. And numbers are rising.
    According to the numbers (from your sources), in Sweden the ratios are steady, now.
    My prediction is further rise within a generation as children of single mothers or children observing/accomodating to the trend grow up.

  42. Brendan says:

    Opus —

    I think that in the UK one has to look at class rather than race (and as I said I was speaking of the middle classes). Marraige seems to carry on as normal with the working-classes – frequently with the children acting as Bridesmaids and Pageboys.

    The situation in the US is precisely flipped: marriage thrives here among the upper middle class and higher, while it is waning in the middle and very much in steep decline in the lower class.

    For women who go EPL, having a younger man sends a message to other women (and men too) that they are still desirable – after all a man in his mid twenties is getting it up for her (even if an EU passport is the prize and whatever the financial compensation). I also suspect that British women will tolerate a lot of romance from an arab which would sound absurd, and with which they would not tolerate coming from a Native Briton – we are not supposed to be romantic and Game (read, Indifference) seems to be a national characteristic.

    This is similar in the US, but plays itself out more in racial terms (tolerate more rough behavior from black boyfriend than from white guy). In general, it’s correct to say that for cougars being able to pull a young man (even for sex) is a status symbol in terms of their personal physical attractiveness. This is overstated, of course, as the number of men in their 20s who will take sex from a woman in her 40s if it’s offered has never been small (and this is also nothing new — it was the topic of The Graduate, a film from 1968), but nevertheless it does seem to assuage the egos of women who were quite hot in their 20s from feeling like they have aged out of their hotness. Trying to get one of these guys as a husband is a different story — there you are in celebrity territory, with someone like Demi Moore spending a not so small fortune on surgeries and training to look much younger than her years, being able to pull an attractive young man for marriage, but still having it blow up in her face anyway. But that’s the exception. Most of the cougaring is about sex, not marriage.

    I think your last paragraph (in reply) is most perceptive. The calculus seems to be that having an English male of a similar status, is worse than having a foreign male on lower status, because to marry a man of similar status reveals that you are no better than he, (you’ve had to settle for less than the Hunky Millionaire Handyman) whereas by going EPL, one avoids any proper comparison. It is a way too of circumventing class, for as soon in England as anyone, man or woman, opens their mouth you know everything about them – I am not sure whether this is or is not so in the USA.

    Class is not as transparent in the US. It becomes apparent through conversation, but not necessarily through accent (although having a strong regional accent is becoming a sign of being lowish class) or, increasingly, through dress (as lower class styles of dress and demeanor become increasingly mainstream for all social classes in the US).

  43. Throwing random things at the OP and the comments…

    Great article, I agree with it completely, I also agree that its good to stay more statistical. Ive come to the conclusion, the hard way, that especially if women are in the conversation, best just repeat the stats and move on lest you get sucked into the ‘its all about me’ empathy lust drive and anecdotes drag you off course.

    The man who was seemingly dissing manliness, I agree with the poster who said he wasnt really doing so, he was using it in its definitional form simply to juxtapose it to the preferences of women. I see however it can be construed as him decrying manhood and he should have taken better care, as we know gynocentrics will squeegee the walls for anything remotely supportive to put in their buckets.

    Most likely know of the ‘wet leaves’ thing in Japan, the baby boomer equivalent there is retiring and the wives are jettisoning them in droves because they cling like….well…..wet leaves. My anecdote from the U.S., my mother was telling me about her friend, they are both 70, her friend about 10 years or 15 ago remarried her husband from her child bearing years, a divorce and second husband in the middle. The women was telling my mother that she would never have done that if she knew then what she knows now…that being that a man, any man, around her is annoying, she jus don need no man around gettin on her nerves all the time, men underfoot etc etc. Funny, he built her the nicenst edifice in the small town Im from, it greets folks as they drive in, it sits on a hill and has a massive foot bridge across a ravine to get to it from the car park area….huge and beautiful….she needs no man under foot to enjoy that though.

    Finally, Ive read about how porn can substitute for sex, to a degree for men single or otherwise, well hell, the combo of porn, romance novels, and a mammal (cat/dog/whatever) in the bed just about gets the lady -over the hump-(no pun intended, eh). During my middle age single time a motorcycle and a dog did the trick, one was company and the other i could ride whenever I wanted.

  44. Dalrock says:

    @Krakonos

    Lavazza and Darlock are trying to extrapolate future from previous human behavior in our society but Whiskey is trying to identify current changes. The former is OK but the problem is there are changes in very basics of our society’s structures. So it may (or may not) have impact on the system we cannot even imagine. It is beyond our life-long experience.

    We aren’t extrapolating anything. Whiskey said marriage had already collapsed in those countries. We looked at the data and found otherwise. This doesn’t mean it won’t change in the future. But you can’t claim it has already happened because you think it might change down the road. Put bluntly, data or STFU. We provided data, Whiskey provided conjecture. Feel free to provide more data.

  45. MikeDiver says:

    There is a lot of statistical evidence that long term marriage is becoming class stratified in the US. If you throw in race the evidence is even stronger. What is happening is that upper middle class and the upper class marry and stay married. There are too many resources at risk to divorce. The rich are rich because of social and family pressure to preserve their wealth.

    There is a strictly matriarchal society I read about on a MRM board. It was in South East Asia I think. The little known fact is that this matriachal society is ruled by a patriarchal upper class society. That is the way I see the US going. Look at the ghetto today with up to 70% out of wedlock births and a large percentage of black women never married at 40. The black community has been leading the way on social trends of disintegration of the social structure, with about a 20 to 30 year lag for the larger (white) population. What we are likely to see in 30 years is committed marriage becoming an upper class (ruling class) thing in the US, with either serial monogomy or no marriage becoming the norm for the lower classes (the ruled).

  46. Dalrock says:

    @empathologicalism

    Most likely know of the ‘wet leaves’ thing in Japan, the baby boomer equivalent there is retiring and the wives are jettisoning them in droves because they cling like….well…..wet leaves.

    I’ve never seen any data to back this up, but my guess is we are talking about a 1 or two point increase in an extremely low divorce rate. I’ve discussed how the press in the UK are hyping this here, and I’ve shared divorce rate per 1,000 married women by age bracket in the US and the UK here. There may be a shift going on in the margins, but nothing there says that older women are divorcing their husbands in droves. Given the oft repeated myth that divorce is driven by husbands dumping older wives for newer models, conventional wisdom says divorce rates should be high for older women. But they aren’t. See the data to see what I mean.

    My anecdote from the U.S., my mother was telling me about her friend, they are both 70, her friend about 10 years or 15 ago remarried her husband from her child bearing years, a divorce and second husband in the middle. The women was telling my mother that she would never have done that if she knew then what she knows now…that being that a man, any man, around her is annoying, she jus don need no man around gettin on her nerves all the time, men underfoot etc etc.

    Game teaches us to watch what women actually do, not listen to what they are saying.

  47. Opus says:

    @Brendan

    Thanks for commenting on my second post (in detail). I cannot think of any really substantive point that I can make further perceptive comment thereon, but I felt I might perhaps say the following:

    My two posts (like most of what I write on-line) are entirely anecdotal: My case may be a strange one, but I think it worth reiterating that the middle classes really do largely seem to be the source of an anti-marraige, anti-male, attitude – an attitude (and from people who would regard themselves as very liberal) that would be viewed with horror were the subject of their condemnation, say, black people. England has always been full of dotty old (middle-class) spinsters – as you can see from reading Agatha Christie – and perhaps the divorcees and singletons are merely the latest exegesis of that phenomenon. Money and an independent attitude tends to provide a fertile ground for eccentricity.

    One of my local, and rather posh watering-holes (a hotel with attached bar) hosts receptions for weddings most Saturday nights and although these weddings are clearly expensive they are still very much down-market affairs. Ironically the pub next door which is superficially more down-market is infiltrated with up-market people – who would regard holding their wedding reception in the next door hotel as just too ostentatiously vulgar – such is the bizarre social world that I live in. Dalrock’s statistics, however, would suggest that my observations are not the norm, and that I am clearly mixing in the wrong circles.

    I have just posted xmas cards to my four closest male friends, three of whom are married and the remaining one is in a very long LTR (which may progress further).

  48. poester99 says:

    If the upcoming “collapse” is bad enough it will be
    “Eat,,Cats” instead.

  49. slwerner says:

    Grerp – ”Anecdotal, but I’ve seen a number of women bounce back after divorce recently when I would have assumed they would have been down for the count for awhile or permanently (esp. having read blogs in the manosphere). Maybe not bounce back married, but bounce back “new guy’s paying some or most of the bills.” These are women my age, about 40, and none of them were gorgeous even in the day. One of them is quite heavy and not even pretty (quite sociable and nice, though), and she started dating the same month she signed the divorce papers…”

    Without knowing more detail, and just going on “face value” here; but I think it’s a better-than-not bet that these women weren’t “bouncing back” but rather what would be better described as “bouncing on”.

    I would wager that if these particular women were not already hooked-up (romantically/sexually) with those “new” men prior to separating/divorcing (I’m guessing that the women initiated it?), they had at least cultivated a rather close relationship with them already.

    While it’s not impossible that a women could meet someone quickly after a break-up, and be ready to get into another relationship; common sense tells us that women prefer to have another man lined-up prior to dumping their partners.

  50. slwerner says:

    poester99 – “If the upcoming “collapse” is bad enough it will be
    “Eat,,Cats” instead.”

    LOL

    The first thing that popped into my head when I first started reading this post was that if things were to get worse (in terms of economics and civilization) the future title would be changed to “Pray. Eat Cats”.

    But, I didn’t want to be the first to be so crass. Thank you for kicking that door open.

  51. slwerner says:

    Good news for 30-something women looking for an exciting new guy to dump their current boring-beta one for. Eric Whitaker, a 40-year-old Tennessee man, seems to have recently become “available”.

  52. Mark says:

    I’ve known some middle aged divorced women who claimed they were happy not having a husband around and they don’t need a man. Then they lose their job and collect unemployment for long periods of time (like my sister) or get a permanent disability retirement for minor or fake ailments (like my ex-wife) or they keep their job and find they don’t make enough to live on and get welfare assistance (like some of my female friends). So, to a certain extent, the government is providing income support that used to be provided by husbands in an earlier era. They don’t need to be married to a man now and can say they don’t need men much easier than they could have in the past because of the government social safety nets that have been set up for them.

  53. PT Barnum says:

    I think there is a heavy “reporter bias” with people saying that the divorced women they know seem to do okay. Everyone here is above average in “quality” in at least one way, and probably many. The people you associate with are also above average(generally).

    It would make sense that an above-average woman willing to sufficiently drop her standards could get a replacement husband. Whether this replacement even approaches the original is unlikely.

    Americans pretty much ignore “lesser” people, and I doubt the people here are much of an exception.

  54. Krakonos says:

    @poester99, slwerner
    And I have thought, with my crippled English, that “Eat, Pray, Cats” means “Eat & prey cats”. I was I bit puzzled when I saw the slogan.

  55. Dalrock says:

    @grerp

    Anecdotal, but I’ve seen a number of women bounce back after divorce recently when I would have assumed they would have been down for the count for awhile or permanently (esp. having read blogs in the manosphere). Maybe not bounce back married, but bounce back “new guy’s paying some or most of the bills.” These are women my age, about 40, and none of them were gorgeous even in the day. One of them is quite heavy and not even pretty (quite sociable and nice, though), and she started dating the same month she signed the divorce papers (employed, seems kind and decent from her description) . Most (all?) of the men are divorced, but none of them are cave dwellers or convicted felons, and they are all employed.

    I don’t think that is actually outside of what the manosphere would predict unless you are describing divorced women 5 or more years out. Women seem to do better than men immediately post divorce. As slwerner suggested, this may be an indication that they already had one or more men already lined up. The pattern my wife and I have seen and I see described often in the manosphere is immediately after divorce the wife is dating up a storm, anxious to tell all about her exciting love life, etc. The husband meanwhile tends to be crushed, deeply depressed, often blindsided. It isn’t until a few years later that the husbands finally recover and the ex wives realize that men wanting sex does not mean they want anything serious; they also seem to hit the wall pretty hard around this time for some reason. By the time the husband gets on his feet the tables tend to turn.

  56. Doug1 says:

    Dalrock–

    Whiskey said marriage had already collapsed in those countries. We looked at the data and found otherwise.

    On every blog I’ve seen Whiskey comment, he regularly takes some partially valid insight, greatly exaggerates it, and then does all sorts of deductions from it without checking back for real world confirmations. He does about no fact checking or looking up. Whiskey is not to be believed.

  57. PA says:

    Whiskey is one part insight, nine parts ridiculous extrapolation. He has a world-weary fatalist and always polite tone, which makes him sound authoritative on the three subjects he always hammers on.

  58. Prof. Woland says:

    Dalrock,

    One reason women seem to do better in the immediate period post divorce is that 75+ % of the time they are the ones who initiate it. This means they have had a substantial period of time, sometimes years, to prepare and emotionally get over the loss while the men who are ambushed will often fight right up to the end and sometimes beyond in a futile attempt to preserve the marriage.

    Another short term problem for men is that they are usually the ones who vacate the premises. Not only do they have to relocate but they often leave a place they have an emotional attachment to. Ten years after my divorce I still miss my old house but not my ex-wife. I have a close friend who is a financial planner. He has commented several times that women are notoriously bad with their settlements because they will always go for the house whereas the men take the pensions and businesses. This is particularly true if there are children because the women assume that the kids will be happier if they stay in the old house. Many of these women end up living in a depreciating asset they cannot fix or maintain that end up sucking them dry. The men on the other hand, eventually move on and often do better when they get a second bite at the apple.

  59. Rmaxd says:

    @Doug1

    “On every blog I’ve seen Whiskey comment, he regularly takes some partially valid insight, greatly exaggerates it, and then does all sorts of deductions from it without checking back for real world confirmations. He does about no fact checking or looking up. Whiskey is not to be believed.”

    Whiskey comments on the status quo of the manosphere, & makes his point far more succinctly then any poster in the manosphere, rivalling that of roissy

    As Dalrock points out, you need game to understand the data Dalrock provides, no one understands or applies game better to social conjecture or data, then Whiskey

    As Whiskey points out correctly & repeatedly in his posts …

    What you & the average AFC dont understand is that marriage is a completely different affair for women

    Women marry for the status of marriage, they dont marry for love, or companionship

    What most ppl dont understand is the fact, women dont need love, or companionship, & most importantly they dont value their emotions, as society has stupidly led you to believe

    Which is why women ALWAYS petition to destroy the poor & needy in their calls for law & welfare

    Women put status first, before children & their families & marriages

    It’s called hypergamy

    Which is why ….

    Yes he, Whiskey, as always, is correct, marriage has collapsed, as the vast majority of women marrying are now settling, rather then marrying a provider alpha of the 50’s & 60’s, hence the massive divorce rate & promiscuity, without socially contextual alpha’s of the 50’s & 60’s there is no marriage

    Without the socially contextual alpha there is only the carousel & promiscuity, & a lifetime of eat, pray cats

    Without a large 4 child family, & large nuclear families, there is no socially contextual alpha

    Without large 4 child families, & large nuclear families & the resulting socially contextual alpha’s to satisfy a womans biology, women turn into pure biologically induced evil

    Every evil always has a two point condition

    A Social conjecture, a social class vacuum, which needs filling

    & biology

    Feminism & marriage has always satisfied both of the above two conditions

    Until men are liberated from the social class stupidity, the status wars of women, & the biology of women, men will continue to have cycles of feminism & economic class wars

    Yes, economic class warfare is waged by & for women, only women hate lower class, lower status women, to the point of destroying the poor & creating massive amounts of poverty & under education, just for the sin of being lower status

    It is NO coincidence women voted for welfare
    It is NO coincidence women voted for alimony
    It is NO coincidence women voted for childsupport
    It is NO coincidence women voted for no-fault divorce

    Higher status women KNEW it would destroy the lower class, they knew it would create massive ghetto’s of fatherless men & self destructive single women

    Which is why higher status women, influential, voted for feminism, & the rest of the middle class women followed suit, hoping to achieve the same crushing blow to the lower status hordes of women below them

    Charity always destroys the poor, it destroys their economies & their ability to earn a living

    Which is why women are the number one contributors to poverty creating charities & fund raisers, it has very little, or nothing to do with empathy

    & which is why they vote for welfare everytime & the grazing herds of idiotic women below them follow unreservedly like cows to curd

    Herds of women always follow herds of women, grazing on their dreams of raising their social status

    Women are class players, status whoring sluts to the bitter end of settling for beta’s

    Women hate the lower status, the little people like the plague

    Women are lower status haters & destroyers

    Which is why …

    The vast majority of marriages are shallow vacous affairs, with the women tolerating & holding the man in contempt for everything he holds value

    The ridiculous advice in the manosphere, women would be happy if only they settled for beta’s is so hilariously incorrect, & deluded to the real nature of women

    Women hate men, they hate hard working decent working men, women hate good honest men

    In short women dont want men, they dont know how to connect with men, they dont how to love men, all they want is a socially certified & preselected, alpha, not for them of course, but other women to drool over

    Women feel nothing for but contempt & hate for a common decent man, with no alpha qualities

    Yes, women are that vacous …

    In war ridden 1940’s & post-war 1950’s married women easily induced seething jealousy, easily by just marrying

    As society grew richer, as the rise of the social engineers made it profitable to destroy families & children, for super corporations called government

    Women, could no longer use marriage to raise their status, marriage simply became too cheap for women to raise their status

    & the hordes of dissatisfied status ridden sluts grew en masse …

    Hence the idiocy of todays carousel riding damaged goods posing as … women … sorry but you no longer deserve that title …

    How about go pop some kids & satisfy your hypergamy … instead of trying to satisfy it by riding the carousel & promiscuity … doesnt take much ladies, not holding my breath … this is women we’re talking about ….

  60. Rmaxd says:

    Crap that post came out longer then i thought … lol

  61. Rum says:

    “socially contextual alpha”
    IMHO, that is a pretty good phrase and a pretty loussy phrase all at the same time.
    It is good because denizens of the Roissy-sphere will instant and accurately discern its meaning. Loussy because anyone outside the charmed circle will discern nothing at all.

  62. Legion says:

    A long but good post, Rmaxd.

  63. whiskey says:

    Dalrock, Scandi nations don’t marry much. True, they raise their kids together, but how stable that arrangement is remains to be seen, it would appear that cohabiting parents are less stable than married ones, on average. It certainly doesn’t seem that trends are good (I stand corrected, the Telegraph links states half will be illegitimate in Britain in 2012). Sweden, Denmark, France, and then Britain are the top ranked highest illegitimate births.

    ============
    Dr Brierley said his extrapolations show the number of married families will decline from 62 per cent in 2001 to 49 per cent in six years.

    In contrast, the proportion of cohabiting couples will rise to about 18 per cent (from 13 per cent in 2001) and one-parent families could represent up to 33 per cent of the population (compared to 25 per cent in 2001).

    “There is much more at stake here than statistics,” he said. “The implications are quite frightening.”

    Although much concern has focused on single parents, cohabiting couples also provide less stable backgrounds for children, said the Economic and Research Council, a Government-funded social research body.

    John Ermisch, a professor of economics at Essex University, said in a paper for the council: “Only 35 per cent of children born into a cohabiting union will live with both parents throughout childhood, compared with 70 per cent born within marriage.”
    ============

    CNN reports that Pew Research Center has concluded that married couples in the US are at a new low, 51% of adults, compared to about 70% in 1960. In 1960, 60% of 18-29 were married, that goes to 20% today. In 1960, 74% of Whites were married, today only 55%. Other races dropped farther, faster, but even Whites are dropping.

    I would say marriage HAS collapsed. It has collapsed in Sweden (cohabiting is not marriage), certainly among lower class Whites in Britain, and arguably in the US. Going from 74% of Whites 1960 to 55% today, and 60% of 18-29 to 20% today sure looks like collapse to me. Yes people still get married, and people still buy houses in California. But the market is still collapsed.

    Put it this way, in the 1960’s nearly all adults were married, social expectations were of marriage, adults got married. Now credit card ads aimed at women openly disdain marriage for boyfriends and rock climbing.

  64. whiskey says:

    Doug1 that’s an odd comment given that the Pew Research Center just showed married couples in the US are only 51% of all adults, compared to 72% in 1960 (according to the WaPo account of the Pew Research). Median age for marriage for women was 20, in 1960. The Pew Survey last year said that 40% of Americans under 30 consider marriage passe. Half of births to HS only educated women are out of wedlock. [See above post when approved for link.]

    My assertions are backed up by the data. If women valued marriage, the numbers would not have slipped so dramatically from 1960, the media age of marriage would not have gone up from 20 for women in 1960 to 26.5 for women (data directly from Pew Research). Again if that’s not a collapse I’d hate to see what would would be one.

  65. whiskey says:

    For those interested, the link to the Pew Research Center “Decline of Marriage” reports is here. Topics include: for Millenials, Parenthood trumps marriage, Public renders split verdict on change in family structure, and the Decline of Marriage and Rise of New Families.

    It makes interesting reading. Basically the old structure of nuclear families that generate wealth and stability are incompatible as Eric S. Raymond in his post “Reconsidering Sexual Repression” noted with unbounded sexual freedom (for women and Alphas, no one cares about beta males one way or another — the undesired are irrelevant). It is interesting to note that marriage remains only alive/well among the wealthy (but not uberwealthy). Basing a society on that thin group however is a bad bet.

    Fundamentally I think the data shows Dalrock is all wrong here: we would not see radical declines in particularly young adults married and increases in median ages, if women valued marriage more than say, a hot guy. Allow women to trade marriage for sex with no decrease (this last is critical) in security and they’ll do it. [I think its a poor bet, all things considered, but they have every right to make it.]

  66. Kathy says:

    Rmaxd : “Women marry for the status of marriage, they dont marry for love, or companionship”

    Er… And a PUA like you would certainly know ALL ABOUT THAT, eh? 😉

    So Dalrock, EW, Athol Kay, Keoni Galt, Mark Richardson, Ulysses, et al, have all been duped by their wives who never really loved them in the first place?

    Pull the other one mate. Lol!

  67. Buck says:

    @Whiskey

    Fundamentally I think the data shows Dalrock is all wrong here: we would not see radical declines in particularly young adults married and increases in median ages, if women valued marriage more than say, a hot guy. Allow women to trade marriage for sex with no decrease (this last is critical) in security and they’ll do it. [I think its a poor bet, all things considered, but they have every right to make it.]

    If iron clad pre-nup laws were passed, taking away the divorce-theft option, the rarest sound in America would be a wedding bell!

  68. Rmaxd says:

    @Doug1 Whiskey & myself, we use data sets to create behaviour models of women

    Dalrock while expertly aware of the same data we use, is more concerned with the current status quo of men & women, & proposes solutions using the state of the art in game, & known biology of women

    I prefer a predictive approach to data, & from the looks of it so does whiskey, Whiskey literally created & pointed out the idea of upper class women marrying, while the uber upper super rich alpha’s revert to all out biological pure polygamy, in every country without exception

    The decimation of marriage, as Whiskey expertly points out is limited to the middle & lower classes, the upper class women hate lower status women with a passion, as evidenced by the hate against the “Racist Lady on the Tram”, by middle class & upper class women everywhere, the lady on the tram is a lower class woman btw …

    I dont look for solutions, i firmly believe women should go back to their biological roots, & men be allowed & respected for their biological need for polygamy

    I believe a man & a womans biology is the solution, not a puritan or religious return, as puritanism & religion is always perverted by self righteous whiny slutty preacher daughters & their hordes of female u go girl stupidity grandparents

    Case in point, men became celibate monks, women wailed like dingbats, but what about us, & men capitulated & gave them nunneries … instead of demanding women remain mothers, hence began the long decline of the honor of mens needs

    Whenever in western history, men have tried to cater to their biology, whether it be as celibates, polygamists, gamers, or PUA, it is always the idiotic women wailing but what about us … wheres our celibacy, wheres our polygamy, wheres our game ….

    The status whoring of women never ends …

    I believe men & women need to create laws to accomodate their biological prime directive, instead of the dark ages men & women revert to, thanks to modernism, which is simply socially engineered living by slogans & superficial stereotypes, while dismissing the greater scientific & biologic consensus & advancements in knowledge theory & knowledge design

    Ignorance as a trend for modernism, the foundation of women grazing cattle for consumerism

  69. Buck says:

    Rmaxd
    If we are going to talk science and biology, what about STD’s.
    Monogamy eliminates the risk, promiscuity drives the epidemic, this too is science/biology.
    Will anyone really argue that the ideal is for two virgins to meet and stay together.
    We, because of our fallen nature and poor choices, have put ourselves in the position of flailing around for excuses, justifications, statistics, etc to salve our consciousness over ignoring the “Ideal” (God ordained?).
    I’m old enough to have seen plenty of life and every promiscuous person I know, ( especially the women…receptors?), have deep, severe, psychological damage due to their promiscuity. The prescription/ non-prescription drug epidemic, alcohol abuse, tattoos, cyber hermit existence, noise/media constantly bombarding our space…all to squelch the sound and hide us from that still small voice of the Lord, informing us of our need for introspection. But the dark night of introspection is also an accusing finger pointing at the judgment seat of God and our filthy soul. This is too scary a place for most people to go.

  70. PT Barnum says:

    The prescription/ non-prescription drug epidemic, alcohol abuse, tattoos, cyber hermit existence, noise/media constantly bombarding our space…all to squelch the sound and hide us from that still small voice of the Lord, informing us of our need for introspection.

    So people get tattoos to “hide from the voice of the Lord”. That’s nice skipee.

  71. Rmaxd says:

    @Kathy

    Again walks head first into hamster driven semantics …

    You could argue athols wife etc., stay with them precisely because of their husbands status & very many alpha traits, & not because of love, as love etc. are simply easily definable terms for eat pray how many shit tests can i get away with today …

    Love & companionship, are the basic hamster mechanics, women use to rationalise their biological determinism

    There is no such thing as love & companionship in biology or nature, in the same way a woman uses terminology such as cute as a maternal attribute, women use love & companionship to humanise their in reality, cold & calculating approach to men, women are void of any real humanity to men, with their biological needs above everything

    Yes, men & women can become chemically attached, through bonding chemicals such as oxcytocine & the addiction to dopamine

    But a womans biology, if violated takes precedence everytime, out of men, women are always the greater biological screw the other gender over

    Which is why the trendy humanisation of biological function, ie love & companionship never applies to women,

    As women are incapable of overcoming their biological needs to screw their own children & families over, for socially approved alphas & status whoring

    Which is why, Again if you look at Athol & Dalrocks posts, their wives STILL shit test them, test their fitness, & run is he still an alpha tests, even though i’ve been married to my alpha husband for 10+ years, stupidly on cue …

    The fact these women still shit test their husbands, run fitness tests & run status game on their own husbands, even after 10+ years of marriage, proves women are incapable of love & dont need companionship

    What they want are alpha traits, chances to status whore, & gina tingling appeals to their biological needs for thugs & criminals, ie. rough sex

    ie., Women need to be kept in line, biologically, as women are incapable of doing it themselves … & they know it

    Socially Contextual Status Buffers

    Women use what i call status buffers, which is why women shit test in the first place, when they cant screw over lower status women to raise their own status, they screw over the nearest male as a buffer, as soon as he displays a beta trait, ie their husband

    Women use lower class women, or shit tests as virtual status buffers to raise their own status

    If a male doesnt display Alpha traits, a woman will immediately use the male to raise her own status, through shit tests etc.

    Yes this might seem messed up, but thats because our world is created by men, & by a mans sense of logic & a mans sense of biology & determinism

    If women created the world, shit tests & status whoring would be perfectly normal, instead of batshit crazy women …

  72. Buck says:

    PT,
    Skippee…

    do you really want to argue the self destruction cry for help?
    loud clothes, garish make-up, tattoos, piercings, …= self loathing. They don’t like who they are and are trying to escape their current existence.

  73. There is a strictly matriarchal society I read about on a MRM board. It was in South East Asia I think. The little known fact is that this matriachal society is ruled by a patriarchal upper class society. That is the way I see the US going.

    I believe the Mosuo in China historically had this arrangement. The nobility followed a more typically patriarchal social structure. The peasants were matrifocal and matrilineal.

  74. Buck

    Yes. Women don’t look happy. They looked happy in the 1960s. I notice this in old photographs and TV shows. And from memory. They were sort of content. The mood was upbeat, but it changed. I saw the change in my mother once she had to work. She literally stopped laughing like she used to.

    When did women become so bitter and angry?

    Rmaxd, I agree that women are the fiercest snobs. They always have been. I think women suffer from status anxiety all their lives.

    Kathy, I think the old Manosphere saying “women fall in respect, not love” contains some truth. My wife and I have been married 25 years, and she still “shit tests” me.

  75. David,

    But even so there does exist wifely love of husband.

    I think women suffer from status anxiety all their lives.

    It does seem to be a bigger thing for the average woman than for the average man.

  76. deti says:

    Buck @ 1:54 PM Dec 17: +500

    Promiscuous women can’t bond to their husbands. It’s really true. They might like their husbands, live well with them, bear their children, even stay for years. But they can’t bond unless they deal with their pasts.

    Promiscuous men don’t have nearly the problems that promiscuous women do. Men with a lot of partners just tend not to gravitate to the monogamous lifestyle, in my experience. Or, if they do take a wife, it’s not until he is well into his 30s or even his 40s. That’s not a “problem”, per se, but it’s not exactly conducive to childrearing.

  77. deti says:

    @Whiskey: In my estimation, you’re mostly right in saying that women will trade marriage for sex and no decrease in security. Lower class women, and some middle class women, will do this. most women of the middle and upper classes won’t, I think. Most married women have kids. Single motherhood is low class. It’s a difficult hardscrabble life. It’s only going to get harder as government coffers dwindle and we move toward economic collapse, which I think is coming. The current economic situation has been unsustainable for 30 years. It can’t continue forever.

    I agree women marry for status, not for love or because they want to “be with their man forever”. Every woman I know married because she thought it would raise her status or make her life more secure, when you get right down to it. Some marry because the BF knocked her up and single momhood is low class. Some marry because it’s time to do so after being kicked off the carousel. Some marry because their parents want them to, and besides, everyone else is getting married. I think some marry because they finally found men who care about them, and well, no one else really worked out, so they marry these men because they’ve been dating long enough, and well, he’s good enough.

    I think it’s really about status. And yes, wives still need to respect their husbands. And yes, wives still fitness test their husbands to make sure they are worthy of that respect. Unfortunately, fitness tests are all about the woman, and what she wants, needs and expects. WIth a fitness test, the wife is really saying “I need to know that you can stand up for yourself with me, because if you can’t stand up to me you probably can’t stand up to anyone else. Show me that you are worthy of my respect by either telling me no, taking charge of the situation, making a decision, or reframing it to your point of view. Please, please, please pass this test so that I can respect you, so I can feel safe and secure, and so I can know that I made a decent decision in marrying you.

  78. I was wondering, instead of saying “game says to do __________________________________________”
    why not just say “its best to do ___________________________” . Maybe its just me but the ubiquitous reference to what game says makes game seem like less than it is, to me. Just sayin.

  79. That is not a slap at game, for those with trigger fingers and the urge to get defensive. Its an innocent question. I ask the same of anyone who takes an idea, set of rules, advice, social template, call it what you will, anyone who prefaces with such and such says………, it seems like a religiosity, I say that because things that are true, like I assume someone using “game says….” would say about the things game says, when thing are true, they are true, not because game says so, or at least that route, if taken, would add credence to the truth or theory being posited.
    I get the feeling that if someone said XYZ, someone else may say no, game says XYZ……when XYZ =XYZ perfectly.

  80. Ahhh, deti, you’ve done it, you said : “”Show me that you are worthy of my respect by either telling me no, taking charge of the situation, making a decision, or reframing it to your point of view. Please, please, please pass this test so that I can respect you, so I can feel safe and secure”””

    Without prefacing it with “game says”

  81. Doug1 says:

    Rmaxed–

    As Dalrock points out, you need game to understand the data Dalrock provides, no one understands or applies game better to social conjecture or data, then Whiskey

    I understand game very well. Was mostly a natural but taught the rest to myself decades ago (I thought of it as the art of seduction) but noting what I did worked best and what didn’t, and closely observing what men who were very good with women did. I did learn a few things from Mystery and Roissy, but mostly I just have like how Roissy has systemtized game and tied it into evo psych.

    Whiskey is right about some things but then he goes and says stuff like most cute and hot white women are more attracted to black guys than white (alpha) ones, which is loony and not born out either by experience of data. He says lots of loony things. PA is about right.

  82. Mark, I don’t think it is hard to imagine the way women would feel. If you want to follow somebody, you want to feel he is worthy. I used to think love could be unconditional, and it can be to some degree in a sound marriage, but so much became clearer about my wife’s behaviour once I understood the true dynamic. A man can love an inferior, but a woman usually cannot.

    There was a film about Huey Long, I think, the American politician. He had a busty mistress. At one point, he says to her, with a hint of self-pity, “I suppose you wouldn’t love me if I was not the Governor.” And she replies, “And you wouldn’t love me if I wasn’t so pretty.” Fair answer.

    On promiscuity, I imagine respect comes easier in a woman’s mind if her husband is the man that deflowered her than if her husband was her twenty-third, and in the immortal words of one wife, reported in the Manosphere, “not the best she has had”.

  83. Doug1 says:

    Whiskey–

    Doug1 that’s an odd comment given that the Pew Research Center just showed married couples in the US are only 51% of all adults, compared to 72% in 1960 (according to the WaPo account of the Pew Research). Median age for marriage for women was 20, in 1960. The Pew Survey last year said that 40% of Americans under 30 consider marriage passe. Half of births to HS only educated women are out of wedlock. [See above post when approved for link.]

    I don’t dispute any of that. Susan Walsh says the same thing plus other stuff in her most recent blog post.

    Marriage has largely gone down the toilet for American blacks, mostly so for Hispancis and for lower class whites. Not for upper middle class and above whites though. Black women of that class have a very hard time finding suitable attractive to them husbands, given that they graduate college at twice the rate black men do.

  84. Doug1 says:

    David Collard–

    There was a film about Huey Long, I think, the American politician. He had a busty mistress. At one point, he says to her, with a hint of self-pity, “I suppose you wouldn’t love me if I was not the Governor.” And she replies, “And you wouldn’t love me if I wasn’t so pretty.” Fair answer.

    Yeah saw it, and remember that line from it. Can’t remember much else about it. Do you remember who played the mistress? Was it Dolly Parton?

  85. No, I don’t think it was Dolly Parton, but I could be wrong. I saw it ages ago. It was friendly towards Long. Being an Australian, I don’t get all the nuances.

  86. Doug1 says:

    Deti–

    Promiscuous women can’t bond to their husbands. It’s really true. They might like their husbands, live well with them, bear their children, even stay for years. But they can’t bond unless they deal with their pasts.

    Promiscuous men don’t have nearly the problems that promiscuous women do.

    Both parts of that are true. I’m not sure if there’s no promiscuous woman in the world who can still fall in love but it’s got to be a small percentage at best in my experience.

    The way the second works for me is that I can fall in love still, but only after and in part because my girl has fallen hard in love with me. If I’m otherwise really into her and she’s hot and the sex is great, that just really touches my heart. It sucks me in. I’m sucked in real good now with my live together girl.

  87. Doug1 says:

    David Collard–

    Yeah it was friendly to him. Huey Long was corrupt but a genuine populist who did deliver to his people a good lot.

    I saw it ages ago too.

  88. Doug1 says:

    Huey picked her up at a burlesque club didn’t he?

  89. PT Barnum says:

    PT,
    Skippee…

    do you really want to argue the self destruction cry for help?
    loud clothes, garish make-up, tattoos, piercings, …= self loathing. They don’t like who they are and are trying to escape their current existence.

    So, skip, you are aware that they are miserable, and are simply lying when you say that they are doing it

    all to squelch the sound and hide us from that still small voice of the Lord

    Because it is FUNNIER to portray a scream of pain as “defiance of the Lord”.

    Well, skip, does Buck ever listen to the small voice of the Lord

    That’s a rhetorical question.

    Your country is going to burn, Bucky, and you know what? BUCKY is one of the reasons why and BUCKY is FULLY deserving of it. FULLY.

    1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.
    2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. Mk. 4.24
    3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
    4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
    5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.
    6 Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

    Given the last line, I really wonder why I waste my time.

    Taa-taa.

  90. Pingback: Cats, pray, diet. | Dark Brightness

  91. Kathy says:

    Deti: “I agree women marry for status, not for love or because they want to “be with their man forever”. Every woman I know married because she thought it would raise her status or make her life more secure,”

    I just don’t agree with that. I married for love and sex.. That’s it.
    I still love my husband and we still have frequent sex after sixteen years of marriage.. I am not an outlier here in Australia. My forty three year old friend(who has two kids like I do) married her childhood sweetheart 20 years ago and they are still happy, as well. My husband’s three brothers have wives whom they married at a young age .. They are all still together and happy.

    I had more money than my husband when we first married (having made an astute real estate investment) However my husband now has a thriving business and is earning a good income, whilst I stay at home with the kids and help out with the business..

    I don’t doubt that there are some people that marry for selfish reasons and not because of love. I’d like to think that that is generally not the case, though… 😦

    I think that how one was brought up has a huge bearing on a person’s character and morals. My father and mother have a very happy marriage, still. They had absolutely nothing when they married.. My husbands parents too, were happily married until hubby’s father passed away a couple of years ago…

    I just don’t see that status kind of thing in the circles that I move in Deti..

  92. Rmaxd says:

    @Buck lol …

    Buck what i find hilarious about christians, is the fact they dont even know what gods ‘ideal’ is …

    Christianity was originally a polygamous religion, before the catholics got their hands on it & even then, it was literally centuries before the catholic church bastardised christianity to a monogamous faith

    Also the bible is based on polygamy .. EVEN jesus’ father joseph was a polygamous, its a well known fact jesus had a brother from another woman, its mentioned in the bible somewhere …

    Also jesus’ ENTIRE lineage came from a massive line of polygamists …

    Most if not all the major figures in the bible are polygamous, everyone from moses to david, to solomon, actually its pretty difficult to find someone who wasnt a polygamist, or came from a massive line of polygamous lineage

    Also interesting fact … the bible DOESNT condemn polygamy, in fact in several places, it encourages it

    ALSO jesus was born OUT of wedlock … lol … virgin birth …

    So, if you think god ordained men & women to be monogamous, think again, or change to amish

    & yes i’ve done my homework on what the bible does & does not say about polygamy …

    When it comes to polygamy it’s good to know god’s got my back … lol

    So Buck is god a heathen when he has Jesus OUT of wedlock? … lol

    So Buck how can christians advocate monogamy, when even THEIR god’s having kids OUT of wedlock? … hmm maybe i’m doing the lords work by banging all these sluts …

    The above is off topic, but i couldnt resist bursting a christians bubble …

    Monogamous Cultures Have More STD’s then Polygamous Cultures

    As for polygamy …

    Polygamy is about soft harems, multiple women screened for std’s ..

    With monogamy, monogamy actually increases std’s as you’re constantly banging anonymous individuals, instead of building a safe soft harem of women as MLTR’s

    So in fact strange cock, from a string of anonymous strangers, is far more dangerous, then a soft harem with MLTR’s, where you know the women are safe & also its alot less time consuming looking for chicks, not to mention you dont give a crap if you dump one of them …

    I’m all for two virgins marrying, but if i wanted to be facetious, from a auto-immunity point of view, it’d be easier for the two virgins to get a std, as they havent built immunity

    Also you dont need sex with hordes of sluts to get an std, you can get std’s from almost everything from toilet seats, to loose tampons … so the two virgins from a std point of view are basically setting themselves up to get std’s from toilet seats … lol

  93. deti says:

    Doug:

    The movie was called Blaze. The actress who played Blaze Starr was Lolita Davidovich. Paul Newman played Gov. Earl Long.

  94. deti says:

    Kathy:

    Marriage itself, the status of being married and having a husband, is itself the status a married woman wants.

  95. Which might help explain why the title Mrs is still quite popular, although Miss is not so popular anymore.

  96. Rmaxd says:

    lol @PT Barnum giving the expert smackdown on bucky … sweet …

    @Kathy … says
    “I just don’t see that status kind of thing in the circles that I move in Deti..”

    While in her post she states …

    “I had more money than my “husband when we first married (having made an astute real estate investment)”

    Yep, very common, most women drop out of high paying six digit salaries, to follow their dream of screwing over an innocent hapless beta & stay at home to raise the minimum amount of kids, ie 2 … & shit test the guy to the skin of his teeth … to satisfy their biological clock …

    Kathy, heres news for you …. it looks like you settled ? … lol

    Couldn’t find a richer alpha, forced the guy to move to the suburbs, nagged him for a bigger house for years on end, even though you only have two kids … ?

    Not even massive amounts of cash deters a woman from following her biological ding dong … lol

    Women satisfy their biology first, then use their now shit tested to kingdom come, innocent beta & wth is wrong with mom, kids, as status over single moms, motherless spinsters & their own daughters, & other teen girls

    An In your face to all nearby sluts …

    Women dont realise, for a kid nearly every day is a wtf moment, whenever she shit tests her husband …

    Families are used as the new pussy pass, ie. some1 pls save my kids … oh woe is me, ironing is so underpaid … or i dont know how to be in a relationship where the other guy cant simply dump me if i behave like a retard …

    or the ultimate use of the family as a pussy pass … if you disagree with me, without putting me in place like a real alpha, i can act as bitchy & nag as much as i want to, cos you cant dump me …

    & the other use of the family as a pussy pass, we shld get a bigger house … for the kids …

    Or the other use of the family as a pussy pass, I will team up with the daughters & screw you over together everytime you try to discipline my daughters or stand up to them, or me, or both, every single day of our marriage, for being a man, screw you i settled for you, why arent you making my gina tingle by bitch slapping all of us …

    Yes, the dynamics of marriage is a wonderful institute for creating hell on earth, then you die & goto Hell v2.0

    Also Kathy states …

    “However my husband now has a thriving business and is earning a good income, whilst I stay at home with the kids and help out with the business”

    Yes this is why you’re still married … he overcame your settling for him by getting you to stay at home, hence avoiding the i’m not happy syndrome, caused by a higher income & your higher status

    But the shit tests never stop … poor guy … lol

  97. Kathy says:

    “Yep, very common, most women drop out of high paying six digit salaries, to follow their dream of screwing over an innocent hapless beta & stay at home to raise the minimum amount of kids, ie 2 … & shit test the guy to the skin of his teeth … to satisfy their biological clock …:

    HA HA HA HA HA HA! Truly you are such a crack up Rmaxd. I gotta tell you though, your crystal ball is on the blink, mate..

    40, 000 a year whilst not a bad wage sixteen years ago, IS NOT a six figure sum. Never had a college degree, worked my way up to Administration Manager, through sheer hard work and application.

    And here is some other news for you.. I was never that maternal in the first place. However because I am a practicing Catholic, and because my husband wanted children, we had two kids and a stillborn baby and a miscarriage in between.. Because my husband dearly wanted kids I REALLY wanted to give them to him, because I loved him very much.. Our last child a boy who just turned 11 is autistic.. Hard work, indeed, but hubby and I love him to bits. We are a team.. It has brought us closer together not further apart as is usually the case. Parents of autistic children are twice as likely to divorce as opposed to those with “normal” kids.

    Sorry to bore all you folks here with the same old same old . sigh..

    Rmaxd, my first husband was infertile. I married him as a virgin at nineteen head over heels in love. He had a gambling problem that he had kept well hidden from me… He also wanted kids.. When the poor guy found out he was infertile he was crushed…Nothing I could do or say would console him.. I loved him very much and tried to reassure him of that.Nothing worked. He kept telling me to leave him and find someone who could give me children. I didn’t want to do that because I only wanted HIM (hard to believe isn’t it? 😉 ) He started drinking and then cheated on me which was the straw that broke the camels back.. He forced ME to leave him..I believed that marriage was for life. I took my vows very seriously. This is because I was brought up the right way by my parents..

    “Yes this is why you’re still married … he overcame your settling for him by getting you to stay at home, hence avoiding the i’m not happy syndrome, caused by a higher income & your higher status”

    Stop! I have tears streaming down my cheeks, here. Where did I say that I was earning a higher income, hmmmmm? Hubby was at the time earning more than I was, though not a six figure sum.. (he is now, however) I had a windfall from the sale of a property because it became a popular sought after area. So I had more money at the time as a result…Lol..

    As to the reason we are still married, I’ll be blunt.

    I love him very much.. he knows me inside and out and he’s a damn good root!. The highlight of my day is often when hubby drops by at lunch time for an hour..

    You really can’t understand that can you R?

    You have probably never ever loved anyone so deeply before, that they eclipse all others. That’s why I have always said that in 16 years of marriage I have never ever once thought of having sex with another man.. It’s the truth. People just cannot conceive of such a thing, however… I usually find it’s the people with loose morals who have trouble getting their heads around that!

    Oh and by the way, we are still in the same house we were 16 years ago ago. It’s pretty much wrecked. Scribble on the walls, no pictures hanging there anymore because our son has just smashed them all. Locks on every door, and bolts too. (our son has no road sense and if he were to run out onto the road he could easily be hit by a car.) Furniture is pretty old and crappy.. Ce’st la vie.. 😀

    But hey, when hubby is giving me one, the roof could cave in for all I care, and, at that particular time nothing else matters.. It’s just me and him..It’s the closest thing to heaven on God’s earth.

  98. Tim says:

    Yes, I can see how one would read my comment as though it were feminist boilerplate. However, there was no advocacy intended. It was just an observation of some working class guys I know, guys who aren’t aware at all of Game or seduction. They’re oblivious to it. They are solid – even good – men. I gathered that their wives left them out of boredom.

    That was pretty much what I was intending to say.

  99. Kathy, my son is also 11 and has autism. It hasn’t destroyed our marriage either.

    You are a good woman, Kathy. May God bless you and your family at Christmas.

  100. imnobody says:

    I saw the change in my mother once she had to work. She literally stopped laughing like she used to.

    This speaks volumes. I am sure that if a woman supported me and I didn’t have to work, I would be laughing all the time.

  101. imnobody says:

    This is why you can’t trust what women commenting in the manosphere say (with few exceptions, like Grerp).

    When women come here and read the vanilla manosphere arguments, they always use the same arguments (“this is not true because I am not this way” aka “the world revolves around my fat a*s”). Women are narcissistic and think every argument is about them. So when you say, for example, “women marry for status”, they reply “this is not true. I didn’t marry for status”. I feel like screaming: “I was not talking about you, you f** moron: I was talking about women in general”.

    But this is not the worse thing. After they have presented themselves as the counterexample of the argument, they start painting a perfect life. Something like that:

    “I didn’t marry for money. I was only interested in love. After ten years of marriage, I am still fit and very hot (men look at me in the street). I give two orgasms to my husband every day, have the house perfectly clean and tidy, I home school the children, help with the job of my husband, cook delicious food, listen to him and my husband is deliriously happy.

    Every time I read this I feel like moving to America and marrying an American woman. Wait a moment, I did move to America and it was full of entitled fat b*tches.

    Is this tale true? How do we know? The husband does not say his version. We don’t have any objective confirmation. We only have the woman’s words. And when I dated in America, women who were forty pounds overweight considered themselves “hot”.

    It’s a master strike. With only some words, the woman has managed to deconstruct an argument without giving any proof. Only with a single history, which could be true or not (but in most cases, it’s false). Nobody calls BS on this.

    I call BS. I really do. Kathy is an example. Compare that

    “I just don’t see that status kind of thing in the circles that I move in Deti..”

    with

    However my husband now has a thriving business and is earning a good income, whilst I stay at home with the kids and help out with the business”

    and with

    Hubby was at the time earning more than I was, though not a six figure sum.. (he is now, however)

    Reach your own conclusions about these perfect marriages of women who are completely uninterested in status. And don’t fall in the same trap next time a woman comes here telling a fairy tale.

  102. Lily says:

    Kathy is Australian. And she doesn’t claim to have a perfect life. If you’ve never read her posts before, even the one just above, it’s clear.

    David’s comment to her really struck me before I even read yours. It struck me as it stood out for being Christian in spirit (also the language, sort of thing an Irish person says). It’s amazing isn’t it that, after all this blog should be more so given its stance etc. Yet the amount of uncharitableness and downright meanness in some of the comments is rather quite something.

  103. imnobody says:

    @Lily

    Australian & American & British & New Zealand women –> Women in the Anglosphere.

    I never said Kathy’s marriage is perfect. I was only talking in general and then I put an example with Kathy.

    In fact, I don’t care about Kathy’s marriage and I would be surprised that Kathy is worried about my relationship (I hope not). We are not talking about personal life here but about our opinions. If Kathy is voluntarily providing information about her personal life as a part of the argument, she has put herself into the spotlight and can be criticized. If you don’t want to be burned, don’t put the hand in the fire. (Of course, Kathy could have expressed her opinion without providing details of her life.)

    I do care about people saying “I have not seen this thing about status here. In fact, I am uninterested in status because I had more money than my husband when we met”, because this is an argument. And then, you find out that her husband earned more than her when they got married and he is earning six figures now. Give me a break! Anybody can marry whoever s/he wants but please don’t give lessons about status not being important. You have to walk the walk before talking the talk.

    But, in fact, Kathy was only an example of something more general. Women coming here and talking about her personal life as if this was an argument. And sometimes, contradicting themselves.

  104. whiskey says:

    Credit where credit is due: it was both Novaseeker AND Charles Murray who reported that White upper class women still get married, go to church, etc. while lower class women do not and Middle class White women trend that way. They were first, about the same time, and deserve credit for it, along with Heather McDonald at City Journal who also has researched the “marriage gap.”

    Moreover I’d say we have to distinguish between wants idealized and concrete choices. Surely most women want to get married … but only to the most dominant, Alpha men. See Monica Lewinsky, case in point, still pining for Bill. Increasingly among Middle Class White women, a beta male husband with less sexiness and no compensating superior status AND earnings, is a poor bet for lifelong companionship. Particularly since his earnings are erratic, and subject to perhaps long periods of unemployment without any compensating upside (hitting it big) for the downside. This is a huge paradigm shift in how families form.

    As for “White women all want Black guys,” the highest inter-racial marriage rates remain: White guys, Asian women. HOWEVER, it would be naive to discount the very real attraction certain star Black athletes have over some of the hotter young White women. “Scoreboard, Baby,” the story of the Univ. of Washington’s shameful program and scandals under Rick Neuheisel (and preceding and succeeding coaches) notes a group of young White sorority women hanging around a group of Black football players. They certainly would not hang around say, White accounting or engineering majors (and did not hang around the White athletes in the program). Diversity by itself implies advantages and disadvantages **relative** to other groups/sexes … and it would be naive to discount that working out in society. Black women for example resent White women married to Black guys. See the OJ case and jury.

  105. Dalrock says:

    @whiskey

    Moreover I’d say we have to distinguish between wants idealized and concrete choices. Surely most women want to get married … but only to the most dominant, Alpha men. See Monica Lewinsky, case in point, still pining for Bill. Increasingly among Middle Class White women, a beta male husband with less sexiness and no compensating superior status AND earnings, is a poor bet for lifelong companionship. Particularly since his earnings are erratic, and subject to perhaps long periods of unemployment without any compensating upside (hitting it big) for the downside. This is a huge paradigm shift in how families form.

    Lewinsky is very rare for white women her age in the US. Roughly 90% of her peers have already married. 90% is a huge percent when you factor in the morbidly obese, lesbians, militant feminists, and women’s legendary 487 point marriage bullet list. This is why young white women in the US take marriage as a given.

    What we can’t tell yet is if the drop in marriage rates for 20 something white women in the US is a continuation of the long term trend in delayed marriage or if there is something else at work. Even if it is an attempt at further delaying marriage (my personal guess), we could still see large shifts in the percentage of these women who ultimately marry. But the data isn’t in yet.

  106. Höllenhund says:

    @imnobody

    “But this is not the worse thing. After they have presented themselves as the counterexample of the argument, they start painting a perfect life.”

    It actually gets even worse – they start bragging about their teenage daughter being hot. I kid you not:

    http://www.hookingupsmart.com/2011/06/28/hookinguprealities/manwhores-for-casual-sex-only/comment-page-2/#comment-47555

  107. Kathy says:

    Hey, H, I am flattered that my comment made such an impression on you that you kept it.. Or perhaps you trawled through all the comments just to find that particular one. :p

    In any event, whether you realize it or not, you have shown my consistency by highlighting that comment. I was saying the same thing six months ago as I am saying here now. 😉

    imnobody, I don’t know why you are chucking a spac attack over my comment. It was in answer to Rmaxd’s incorrect assumptions about my own personal life. I just refuted what he said, is all. In order to do that, unfortunately, I had to provide details of said personal life..

    Just because my experience is different to yours does not mean that it is any less valid than yours. I live in a different part of the world, and people are pretty conservative around here.

    David! Thanks for your very kind( and most undeserved) comment. * Bows graciously* ” I always enjoy reading your thoughtful stuff. (maybe you might crank that blog of yours up again next year, eh?) Hope you and your family have a very happy and peaceful Christmas too. And if the wife gets out of hand you can always give her a good spanking. 😉

    An Irish blessing for you mate:

    “May joy and peace surround you,
    Contentment latch your door,
    And happiness be with you now,
    And bless you evermore.”

    Lily.. You’re a VERY nice and kind lady. I hope you, hubby and family also have a wonderful Christmas. 😀

    .

  108. Rmaxd says:

    @Kath imnobody’s post is spot on, maybe you should re-read it a few times, we get women like yourself pretty often on this site …

    lol also Kath you’re reply pretty much confirmed everything I wrote …

    Conservatism has nothing to do with it …

    You didnt exactly dispute any of my claims, about yourself, merely confirmed everything i wrote …

    Not surprising you think otherwise, plenty of women from alte’s site come on here, like Lily, batting for team woman & promptly get batted out …

    While i’d love to keep your hamster well fed, i really havent got the time …

    But thanks for the posts, its always hilarious to see a woman trainwreck her hamster, as it goes into nawalt at warp speed … seriously audition your hamster for star trek … or use it to create warp travel at nasa …

  109. Rmaxd says:

    @Hollenhund
    “But this is not the worse thing. After they have presented themselves as the counterexample of the argument, they start painting a perfect life.”

    It actually gets even worse – they start bragging about their teenage daughter being hot. I kid you not:

    http://www.hookingupsmart.com/2011/06/28/hookinguprealities/manwhores-for-casual-sex-only/comment-page-2/#comment-47555

    Status whoring at its best … lol

  110. Kathy says:

    Ha ha ha , thanks so much for your erudite, well reasoned and considered argument Rmaxd.. I expected nothing less from you, and I was not disappointed. 😉

    Have a good Christmas too, mate. 😀

  111. Höllenhund says:

    Kathy, may I ask whether you realize how incredibly lame you sound? Do you even realize you’re bragging about the hotness of your teenage daughter to complete strangers on the Internet? I’d treat that as standard practice if you were bragging in a hair saloon to some other woman from your neighborhood, but come on. Really, what’d you think if some man showed up in the comments and said ‘yeah, my daughter is just 15 but she’s already smoking hot, man! There’s a horde of teenage boys eager to fuck her so I have to guard her with a baseball bat.’. The mind boggles.

  112. Kathy says:

    Sheesh, you REALLY are worked up about some inconsequential comment I made six months ago, H, aren’t you.. Lol.
    I made that comment at Susan Walsh’s blog..
    Remember her response to you in relation to my comment, on that thread?

    Well,

    here it is…. Susan said:

    “July 3, 2011 at 8:42 am

    @Hollenhund
    Lay off. You’re being really unpleasant. I have no problem with Kathy reveling in her daughter’s attractiveness, and this is my blog. There’s nothing supremacist about it, so why do you object? If you’re not interested, ignore her. I find it strange that you choose that as a subject for debate.

    And I’d appreciate it if you refrain from linking to HUS at any woman-hating blogs in future. The last thing I want is more of those types here. ”

    ’nuff said. 😉

    Oh, and btw, have a very Merry Christmas, H.

  113. empathologicalism says:

    Imnobody

    Your observation is of course perfectly true and valid. They even do it if you use the word “generally”

    “Generally people are right handed”

    “That’s not true I have 2 left handed brothers”

    Is this a problem with basic math education or is it a design flaw in how the brain attempts to process facts……cooooorect! its a design flaw in how the brain processes facts, especially in the abstract

  114. empathologicalism says:

    Imnobody

    Your observation is of course perfectly true and valid. They even do it is you use the word “generally”

    “Generally people are right handed”

    “That’s not true I have 2 left handed brothers”

    Is this a problem with basic math education or is it a design flaw in how the brain attempts to process facts……cooooorect! its a design flaw in how the brain processes facts, especially in the abstract

  115. Anonymous says:

    And the daughter probably isn’t even that hot, anyway.

  116. Lily says:

    Oh thank you, Kathy, that’s a very kind thing for you to say. I really wish you and your family a very happy Christmas. It’s been a tough year around for a lot of people. Across the world I think. I hope it’s better next year.

    “Not surprising you think otherwise, plenty of women from alte’s site come on here, like Lily, batting for team woman & promptly get batted out …”
    I usually ignore your ramblings. But that is so funny. You obviously know nothing about Alte’s site or me. Thank you. Really made me laugh.

  117. Lily says:

    I stood up for Doug recently. Would that make me ‘Team Man’? ‘Team Philanderer’?

    You know what, it’s just a bit unnecessary doing personal attacks on people. Especially when you haven’t got your facts right. It’s unnecessary and often vicious.

    And iamnobody specifically referred to American women (he did not say Anglosphere) so I mentioned that Kathy is in Australia.

    That’s all.
    Happy Christmas.
    Time for peace and goodwill to all men (and women).

  118. Rmaxd says:

    @Lily

    I wasnt attacking you, I stated an opinion … big difference

    I just find women like yourself amusing, & as long as you amuse me, i’ll comment on you & keep your hamster well fed …

    For the record I know plenty about alte’s site, & as you’re comments are public record, I also know plenty about you …

    As i’m commenting on your internet persona, that is all i’m concerned about

    I’ll feed your hamster for old times sake Lily …

    “I stood up for Doug recently. Would that make me ‘Team Man’? ‘Team Philanderer’?”

    Two wrongs dont make a right, but two rights dont correct a wrong … enjoy your rocket powered hamster, your welcome …

    Christmas cheer to you, & a new year

  119. Rmaxd says:

    I meant to say

    Christmas cheer to you, & a new year to all men (not women) …

  120. Venom Froggy says:

    @Mike Diver:
    “As much as I like the idea of vengance against the evil/feminist women being they become single old ladies with cats, I think in real life the crazy old ladies with cats are completely content with their lot. This assumes of course that she had the marriage, kids, and divorce theft first. ”

    ========

    Ultimately, women don’t love men nearly HALF as much as men love women. And you’re right. If men were to suddenly vanish from the face of the earth, the women would (comparatively speaking) shrug their shoulders in response.

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  122. Kevin Willis says:

    If men were to suddenly vanish from the face of the earth, the women would (comparatively speaking) shrug their shoulders in response.

    No, they’d want to know who was going to pay the bills, take out the trash, mow the yard, and get up in the middle of the night to turn down the thermostat after they (the ladies) wake them (the now missing men) up out a dead sleep. Amongst all the other entitlements men provide the ladies.

    That being said, men want to propagate their DNA. They love women just as much as they think they need to in order to accomplish that goal. Generally speaking.

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  125. Bee says:

    Feminist writer Shulamith Firestone died alone. Very alone. Her landlord discovered her body about a week after her death.

    http://takimag.com/article/feminisms_rotting_corpse_kathy_shaidle#axzz29C2lKTEi

  126. Mark says:

    “”But a womans biology, if violated takes precedence everytime, out of men, women are always the greater biological screw the other gender over””……………

    You have got that right!…..100%…..vile,vindictive,selfish,evil scum!

    If you are going to read one book this decade…..this is the the book! If you have a low opinion of women now…wait until you read this book….you will run from them like the plague!!!!!
    http://www.protectionformen.com/

  127. Mark says:

    “”Promiscuous women can’t bond to their husbands. It’s really true. They might like their husbands, live well with them, bear their children, even stay for years. But they can’t bond unless they deal with their pasts.””

    Excellent comment!……Your so correct!….I have seen this through my married friends….that happened to choose a wife very poorly!

  128. Mark says:

    “”Being an Australian, I don’t get all the nuances.””

    You are an Aussie?….Aussie guys are great!….love Aussies…..awesome hosts!…been to your country loved it.But your women are garbage!….same as the UK…..I am Canadian.I thought Canadian/American women were bad…..then I went to the UK and Aussieland and discovered that I “despised” the women completely!….Kiwi women are garbage also!

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  131. Sarah says:

    77% of divorced women not being sexual?? Is that right?? From what I’ve seen they keep shagging around with younger guys…

    Hey stop connecting cats to these old dears please! Pleease! Cats Rock! I’m tired of the cliché…

  132. Nora says:

    You seriously gotta do an update on the Gilbert situation. She apparently left the Latino hottest for her best frond who was dying of cancer two years into their lesbian coming out.

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