The answer to this question can be found at the very end. I’ll start with Harvard’s perspective:
“A good marriage can improve a man’s health, but marital discord can take its toll on both happiness and health. In the MRFIT study of 10,904 American married men, for example, men who divorced were 37% more likely to die during the nine-year study than men who remained married. Similarly, a British study of 9,011 civil servants linked stressful relationships to a 34% increase in the risk of heart attacks and angina. And an Israeli study of 10,059 men found that stressful family relationships appeared to increase the risk of dying from a stroke by 34%. Divorce also triggers a sharp increase in the rate of suicide by men, but not women.”
So basically, a good marriage will probably make you happier. But a bad marriage will make you miserable.
What my experiences in nursing have taught me about female nature.
Women show their true colors at work because they have entire 12 hours shifts to express how they really feel. Since 2013, my workplaces have been 90% female. That said, none of the women have had anything positive to say about their boyfriends/husbands. I repeat: there has not been a single time where I have heard a female nurse compliment or express gratitude for her significant other. Most of the women’s complaints have been:
-“He doesn’t make enough money.”
-“He is lazy and sits around all day.”
Listening to female nurses has taught me that when it comes to long term relationships, most women don’t care too much about sex or even the emotional fitness of men. Women simply want men who can provide resources.This revelation has brought me to the next logical conclusion: women view men as disposable.
At the end of the day, women have incredible survival instincts. The purpose of their lives is very simple: find men who can provide for offspring so that the women can more readily care for the offspring.
So when it comes to marriage, what’s in it for men?
In my opinion, there are three main positives to getting married:
2. Married men are healthier than men who were never married.
3. Married men earn between 10 to 40 percent more than single men.
So if you’re interested in increasing your happiness, enhancing your health, or earning more money, marriage might be a wise choice.
On the other hand, there at least three negatives of getting married:
2. Women initiate divorce 70% of the time.
3. 42-45% of first marriages end in divorce.
I haven’t even covered the other issues, such as the rate of cheating and the true costs of divorce, alimony, and child support.
Although marriage has its benefits, the reality is that marriage is really a gamble at the end of the day. The trouble is that it’s tough to predict which marriages will work out. If you were to ask any recently engaged man if he thinks his future wife is going to divorce him, seek alimony, or otherwise financially ruin him, he would laugh and say “of course not! She’s different!” But the reality is that half of marriages will end up dissolving, and there is no evidence that you (or your girlfriend) is special. You’re just next.
Put in another way, if we went skydiving and I told you that your parachute had a 45% chance of NOT deploying, would you jump out of the plane? Of course not. So why would you get married if you know that there is a 45% (some say 50%) chance the marriage will dissolve? Is it because you think you’re special? So did every other man that got married and subsequently divorced!
Conclusion: You should only get married if you can tolerate the worst case scenario, which is a divorce and its financial and emotional consequences. The only valid reason to get married is to raise children in the backdrop of a two-parent household. But even if this is your endpoint, just understand that half the time, the marriage will end up dissolving, negating the reason you got married in the first place.
