"Maintenance" Sex

If you have a car, yes, you have maintenance done on it, at least fairly regularly (and this reminds me that I desperately need to get my car's oil changed and lubed--I am embarrassed to admit how long it has been since these necessary things have been done).  What gets me is now this "maintenance" is supposed to apply to heterosexual relationships, specifically marriage.  The big thing, which deserves every bit of ridicule and condemnation possible, is this notion of "maintenance sex."  What the hell is that?  This bullshit of saying (mostly) women should go through with it with their husbands even if they don't want to is telling women it is okay for husbands to rape them as the women aren't fully consenting.  This nonsense providing sex to a dude as a woman's duty needs to die a quick death. 

There is this notion, which our society finds it hard to get rid of, that claims men "need" sex and they have a "right" to it.  No, they don't.   Men aren't going to die if they don't have it.   They aren't entitled to anything from women (and women aren't entitled to anything from men).  It doesn't matter if the guy is married or not.  Men aren't entitled to anything from women.  A woman is not a thing for a man to put his dick in and pop babies out.  This rendering women as subhuman simply dies hard in our society, and it needs to stop.

In many ways our society hasn't grown up one damned bit since the 1950s. 

A husband raping you--and, horrifying as it is, more than a few of these dudes rape their wives while the wives are asleep--is not a way of "strengthening" any marriage.

To me this is distinctly sick.

Love Is Brain-Dead

There is nothing stupider than an old man who takes up with a far younger woman and then acts like she is anything other than what she is.  The Daily Mail, People, and a host of other gossip/entertainment sites are abuzz with stories about talk show host Larry King, 85, filing for divorce from his wife of 22 years, Shawn, who is a mere 59 years old.  She was an actress and singer at the time she married her meal ticket, who was apparently not attracted to women remotely close to his age.  She was strictly a trophy wife, like most of King's ex-wives.  I mean, none of these women could possibly be attracted to his looks or personality.  It is all about the wallet.

Trophy wife with corpse

You know, men can be so damned stupid, and I think having money makes stupid men even dumber.

What's worse is Shawn had two children with King in addition to the one she already had, and those two sons are total greedheads, afraid their mother was going to walk off with all the inheritance, so they reportedly pressured him to file for divorce before he croaks.  According to this linked article, he wasn't expected to live much longer, and the grim prognosis was in April.  He is still dragging his carcass around, probably looking for another caretaker who looks like a model.

When I think about my niece, who lost her husband of 25 years to pneumonia last week after being sick with major health issues (heart problems and lung cancer), age does matter.  It isn't just a number.  Those gaps count when the senior partner inevitably goes into physical or mental decline.  The junior partner, most of the time being the woman, gets stuck in a rut taking care of a man she has no business at that age doing.  My niece was 18 years younger than her husband.  They had maybe ten good years together before he started having major health problems.  Towards the end, he could barely leave the house and was on oxygen.  He was tough, but this wasn't a good thing for my niece to deal with.  He was 78, while my niece had just turned 60 and has her own major health issues.  Not fun.

As for Larry King, I don't feel sorry for him at all.  He thought he was hot stuff and thought he could buy love with his wealth.  However, you'd think after the third or fourth divorce, he'd get a clue the women weren't attracted to anything other than his wallet and his fame as a wishy-washy talk show host with suspenders.   I can't even imagine having kids with this guy when he was in his sixties, and I believe the only reason his wife had them was to tie him even closer to her.  Why the hell didn't this idiot get fixed decades ago and have spared himself a ton of grief?  Maybe Shawn got pregnant through IVF or turkey baster.  To think she got pregnant the "natural way" is horrifying to contemplate.

Of course, this marriage was never going to last.  Supposedly Shawn has been cheating on him, but really, if she is, can you blame her at all?  The blame falls squarely on her husband for being an idiot for marrying a woman 26 years younger to begin with.

Not only can love be blind, it can be downright brain dead.

If Marriage Goes, Goodbye and Good Riddance

Contrary to propaganda, marriage hasn't always existed, and societies did just fine without it.  It came into existence around 5,000 years ago for a specific reason, and that is it was considered a property transfer arrangement between fathers and husbands.  Women were part of the property to be exchanged, and any children resulting from the marriage became the property of the man.  Marriage seems to have come into existence around the time people realized there was such a thing as paternity, and of course the creation of the concept of property furthered the necessity of a man making sure "his" offspring were really "his."  Women weren't considered human beings, just vessels to be fucked and have children.

Religion had little to do with the creation of marriage.  It always was a legal or quasi-legal arrangement to guarantee men's paternity rights.  All the metaphors about marriage being representative of Christ and the church (in Christianity) are just that--metaphors.   They have nothing to do with why it ever existed in the first place.  Societies continued without it for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years prior to its existence.

However, marriage has had its day, and marriage rates (plus birthrates) have declined over the decades.  The baby boomers, especially the second half of the cohort, started paving the way for the decline in the institution.  I say the second half because the first half was still like previous generations (especially the two prior generations who came of age during WW II and the fifties) and did the early marriage bullshit that seems so damned repulsive in retrospect but was still rampant throughout the sixties and early seventies.  The median age of first marriage for women (half before, half after), hovered around 20-21 years of age (men around 22-23) until 1980, when it hit 22 for the first time in years, if ever.  Women who were getting married, if they were, and the vast majority of the baby boom generation did at least once, were starting to do it later.  More and more women were working in jobs, whether married or not, and this meant they were less inclined to get married and have children or have fewer children.  This has continued to this very day, with the millennials being less inclined to do the marriage and babies lifestyle than even the baby boomers, and generations X and Y.

One could argue that marriage started falling out of fashion even before the baby boomers were born, and that is likely true, as women started getting more and more rights and gaining access to more occupations, starting in the late 19th century.  One could argue, and I do, that the postwar mania for early marriage and lots of kids was an aberration, an aberration fostered by the kicking out of millions of women from factory and other "male" jobs they held during  World War II in order to make way for the returning servicemen, plus tax incentives and the G.I. Bill.  However, things did change, especially with the economy and the decline of the "family wage," which began in the mid-1970s.  Economy or not, though, women were not going back once they got a taste of the world outside the confines of the home.

As an aside, I received in the mail the other day a copy of a book I obtained on Amazon of an old, old, old book I read years ago by the psychologist Lawrence Casler, who I don't know if he is still alive (he was early in the 21st century).  This book is titled, Is Marriage Necessary?  It was published in 1974, when I was a mere 19 years old, but it was a favorite of mine for many years.  Despite the afterward by the horrible pervert Albert Ellis--believe me, this was NOT a selling point in favor of this book--Casler's tome was way, way, way ahead of its time.  As I remember, he sympathized with feminists who said that abolishing marriage was necessary for the liberation of women, but he wasn't in favor of it "at this time" as he thought a more gradual decline in marriage with alternative arrangements was more likely to have public acceptance.  He was right, and marriage rates have declined over the decades since, with more and more people cohabiting before or instead of marriage or not bothering with doing either at all.   This despite same-sex marriage having been legalized, of which there was admittedly a big boom in, but gay/lesbians are a small segment of the population.  Overall, the die has been cast.   Now we are at the point in 2019 where married people over 18 make up only half the adult population whereas 60 years ago, in 1960, 72 percent of adults were married.  This is a huge change that will not, in my view, reverse itself ever again despite attempts by the right to return to the 1950s and ban abortion.  It is not going to happen at all.

There was a time years ago, when there was something called "developmental tasks," I believe based on Erik Erikson's ideas, that were largely shaped by the postwar early marriage/lots of babies era in which he lived.  Marriage and having kids were seen as important "developmental tasks" that ALL adults had to do in order to be seen as truly "adult."  Of course, being an adult is a chronological reality, not something as a result of doing certain tasks society peddles on them to try and con them to do.  Lots of people STILL believe the nonsense that marriage and parenthood confer "adulthood" despite the human wreckage such beliefs often cause.  Single people, especially women, were regarded as failures and subhumans, and they still are to a great degree by many, most often acute in religious communities.  Most people these days are not following these "developmental tasks," at least not under certain time frames, but the propaganda is still there peddled by the likes of Jordan Peterson and James Dobson.

There is really little good about marriage despite the tons upon tons of sentimentality about it, and there is definitely nothing in it for women apart from the much-higher standard of living, a standard of living that requires women put out sexually to men  in order to get it in the case of heterosexual marriage.

Snip from the article linked:

Of course, some would argue that, regardless of divorce statistics, marriage is a stabilizing force for relationships, that the commitment itself helps couples stay together when they otherwise might not. It’s true that marriages are less likely to end in breakup than are cohabiting relationships, but that might simply be because married people are a self-selected group whose relationships were already more committed. Many people anecdotally report that getting married deepens their sense of commitment, even when they didn’t expect it to.

But other studies have shown that it’s the level of commitment that matters to relationship satisfaction or the age at which the commitment is made—not a couple’s marital status. A further problem is that social norms surrounding marriage, divorce, and cohabitation have changed rapidly in the past few decades, so getting a reliable longitudinal data set is hard. And though divorce is certainly difficult, it’s not as though cohabiting unmarried couples can just walk away: Mark and I own property together and may someday have kids; beyond our own sense of commitment, we have a lot of incentives to stay together, and disentangling our lives would be hard, even without divorce.

The psychologist Bella DePaulo, who has spent her career studying single people, says she believes there are serious repercussions of putting marriage at the center of one’s life. “When the prevailing unquestioned narrative maintains that there is only one way to live a good and happy life, too many people end up miserable,” she says. The stigma attached to divorce or single life can make it difficult to end an unhealthy marriage or choose not to marry at all. DePaulo thinks people are hungry for a different story. She argues that an emphasis on marriage means people often overlook other meaningful relationships: deep friendships, roommates, chosen families, and wider networks of kin. These relationships are often important sources of intimacy and support.

link

In other words, marriage and the nuclear family tend to cut people off from other relationships and from society as a whole, which is a great argument against it. I can't disagree with it.

It is just that the downward trend of marriage has been in the works for decades, and, in my view, in a 100 years or so, it will be seen what the late feminist writer Eva Figes wrote nearly fifty years ago in Patriarchal Attitudes as the "hollow sham" that it is.

In my own life, the only way I would ever marry would be only for the benefits like taxes, pensions, and Social Security, and only if I didn't live with the man at all.  That is the only way it would work for me.

ALL "Masculinity" and "Femininity" is Toxic

ALL of it. Sex roles are poison and limit and even destroy lives.

I cannot believe that a man who makes a choice and who isn't harming anyone else by taking his wife's name when they got married recently would evoke death threats by some deranged dudes.

It boggles the mind that some men are so insecure or hate women so much they think such a choice by a man they don't know can be seen as "emasculating." It shows me just how destructive the way we bring up children to think women and girls are so "icky" and "gross" that anything they do is seen as inferior to men.

People like to pretend that the decision to change your name after marriage is a purely personal choice — no more controversial than, say, the decision to get married in Summer or Spring or in a church or a garden.

But this is only the case if couples make the conventional "choice" and the woman changes her name.

Even if women make the "free" and "personal" choice not to take their husband's name after marriage, research tells us that this decision affects the couple's perceived status, with people assuming that the man is weak and the woman is a ball-breaker.

If, like Grant Phillips and his wife, couples subvert the convention even further with the man taking the woman's name, well then they better bunker down for the brutal backlash.

Why would these men — and yes all the abusive messages sent to Phillips were written by men — take time out of their day, and waste the keystrokes and the blood vessels abusing someone they don't know for doing something that doesn't affect them?

Heaven forbid any man treat a woman like a human being and not a possession and actually show respect for her, even honoring her and her family of origin.

Totally Sick

I came across this 2014 article from Women's Day when doing some web surfing. It smacks of something right out of the 1950s with regard to explaining "why men cheat."

There is only one reason why they do it. It is because they disrespect women, both their wives and the women they cheat with. The article assumes it is solely the wife's fault the husband cheats, and it is up to the wife to make sure he doesn't cheat.

A man who respects women does not cheat. Ever.

The article just justifies abuse, and cheating IS a form of abuse, with more than a few of these men being sociopaths. They don't take responsibility for their actions and claim it is the other person's fault they do it. These men are no prize and should be dumped by both women.

It is just shocking to me such an article ever made its way into print, or, in this case, on the web.

Message to Young Women: Forget About College

THAT is the insidious message conveyed by this utterly crap article from an equally utterly crap book that spews the notion that if women go to college and graduate, no man will want them. College women are such elitist snobs they will not deign to marry men who are "beneath" them, and therefore they can expect to be failures in life because they didn't get some man to support them, and all of the other bullshit messages they get every single time there is an economic downturn.

The motive is to scare women out of going to college and into the labor force because they have no right to take jobs away from men, the people who really "need" the jobs because they have or will have families to support. Jobs are scarce, and therefore women need to be booted out of contention.

It is a bunch of 1950s-style crap spewing the insidious idea that highly educated women will never find husbands, which is completely contradicted by the facts. The more educated the woman, the MORE likely she will be married. People are delaying marriage because of economic reasons and large student loan debt. I know of what I speak as somebody who is never-married, REALLY never-married, and not somebody who is 25, 30, or 35 years old. The author is a lying POS. I KNOW for a fact he is a lying POS because he goes around and claims that Reno, Nevada, a town that has quite a few Mormons, by the way, is one of the best parts of the country for single women to meet single men. I LIVED in that city for 26 years, from 1984 to 2010, did NOT have a college degree when I moved there, moved there for job reasons, and I will TELL you there are NO available, mentally stable men at ALL in that town. NONE. ZIP. Whatever surplus of men there are have to be in rehab or at St. Vincent's, the homeless shelter. There are a high number of alcoholics and people with gambling addiction there. There are also a lot of con artists there. Many men and women have been divorced multiple times, and I am not talking about once or twice. Try three, four, five, or more. Nevada in general, and Reno in particular, is notorious for having a highly transient population. It is extremely difficult to meet others in that town.

I went back to college as a non-traditional student when I was 30 years old in part because of the realization there were no men to be had in Reno. This was long before the advent of internet "dating" and other alternatives. I had to focus on my own future, on my own needs. I didn't necessarily want marriage anyway, but the reality of the Truckee Meadows, with all of the unstable people and no available men at my place of work, forced the situation on me. I wanted to improve my standard of living, plus I missed going to college, so I paid my way through. No, there were no available men in my age bracket at UNR, there were no available men at places where I volunteered over the years. None. Nevada is the total pits in meeting people if you are looking to snag a spouse or even a long-term relationship.

The author of this book is peddling the same bullshit that was circulating around 1986 that unmarried women over 40 had a better chance of being killed by a terrorist than in finding a husband. It was an exaggeration, of course, but the notion that "elite" women, whatever the hell that is, would never get married if they wanted husbands was immediately debunked.

It isn't any different now and probably less the case because of online "dating" and other ways to meet people that weren't available 30 years ago when I was at the so-called "marriageable" age.

Why the Hell Bother?

If you are married and decide to screw around, why the hell be married in the first place?

It doesn't make sense at all.

Not only does cheating hurt other people, but it is a total waste of time.

I can't see any benefits to it at all.

When you sit down and think about it, it's downright disgusting.

More Full of Shit Than a Christmas Goose

These kind of books and articles designed to scare women out of the jobs men "deserve" to have because they are men and potential providers won't have any effect at all because the real problem--if there is indeed a problem--of declining marriage rates can be attributed mostly to a worsening economic climate for both sexes.

Young marriages ala the 1950s, when women were considered "unmarriageable" if they weren't hitched by age 23, aren't coming back to the United States. The economy will not allow it.

Ditto for other parts of the western world. It's all the same thing. Neoliberal economic polices have been catastrophic for individuals and for families.

It sounds as if the author of the recent Men on Strike book just took a look at a few social networking sites with anonymous posters, perused a few equally anonymous MRA/PUA websites, talked to a few guys in real life, and then extrapolated what she heard to apply to the world at large in order to validate her shaky thesis. Hey, twisting what those people have said is a way to get attention from the media and to line her pockets. It also saves on the heavy lifting required in academia to actually do a study on attitudes toward marriage.

It's kind of funny. If this author is to be believed, heterosexual men are "boycotting" marriage while at the same time gays and lesbians are trying to get full rights to marriage.

It's like a gilded cage in a way. Here are all of these people who want to get out of marriage or avoid it while another group is anxious about getting in.

It's all pretty bizarre.

The men supposedly "boycotting" marriage will for the most part eventually change their minds when the right women come along, especially those women who are working so that these men's lifestyles drastically improve thanks to the ability to pool resources.

Single women, especially never-married women, find that living that way is almost a guarantee they will never, ever be able to retire or have to work far longer than married people or even single men given the rampant sexism and ageism of our society. Being single for the vast majority of women is extremely difficult because of the lack of financial resources. It's almost a guarantee for destitution in old age.

It doesn't matter how well you have planned or what career path you take as a single woman. If you get tossed out on your ear in your fifties, lotsa luck ever finding similar work ever again. It's a long, long time before hitting 70, when "experts" say single women should begin taking Social Security. It would be laughable if it weren't so cruel.

The higher standard of living, which also helps in better health since there are more financial resources to get medical care, is the one big advantage to being married. Living with somebody day after day, year after year, decade after decade isn't necessarily better for the psyche, but the obvious perks can't be dismissed.

How Do They Stand It?

Some study tries to explain how in the hell people can stay married 30, 40, 50, 60 or more years. Of course people surveyed are not going to talk about the drastic decline in the standard of living if they divorce (especially for women), religion, habit, or family pressures. That's the problem with surveys or studies, including long-range ones--nobody has to answer under penalty of perjury why they choose life without the possibility of parole.

As a lifelong single person, I can't even fathom what the hell it would be like to live with somebody year after year, decade after decade. It just boggles the mind. Not that I regret for one minute I didn't marry at all; you can't miss what you don't have.

The ONLY real advantages to being married and staying married are the higher standard of living and safety net if one becomes unemployed. Let me tell you, when you are single, over 50, and have your career kicked out from under you, it isn't fun to survive on next to nothing, marking time until you are 62 because there are NO job prospects.

However, the constant invasion of privacy, the constant give-and-take of living with somebody else, the possibility of living with somebody who is a cheater, a drunk, or an abuser, don't look good, either.

No thanks. Those couples can have their "happy" lifestyles.

I have to laugh at this study's quack theories about genetics and marriage stability, let alone theories about how the woman's emotions or whatever have an effect on a marriage's success or failure.

Life Without Parole

This isn't the first time this has happened, but the family was sure quick to exploit it.

Personally, I think it is a bunch of bullshit. People in the past stayed together for decades on end, long after the relationship was good for them. Because people live a lot longer now than many decades ago, it simply isn't common for couples to stay together 2/3rds of a century or more, and definitely not natural to live with somebody that long and not develop a set of independent interests. Since this couple was presumably Catholic, they probably didn't believe in divorce anyway.

Of course it could really have been a love match, but somehow I think it was more of a co-dependent relationship.

Thanks to decades of romantic nonsense in the movies and the like, most people think this is the most wonderful story in the world, but I find it simply sad.

Which it is.

Marriage in "Decline"? I Don't Believe So.

A decline in the marriage "rate" isn't the same thing as a decline in marriage at all. I don't think there is since the vast majority of people marry at least once in their lifetimes. It is rather that people have rearranged their lives to where they don't marry right out of high school or college anymore but perhaps have a series of relationships prior to marriage or between marriages. Sometimes these result in children, sometimes not.

A seeming increase in single parents doesn't change this fact. People have been bellyaching about this for decades.

That isn't the same thing at all as saying marriage is a thing of the past.

From somebody who has lived her entire adult life as a single person, here is the unvarnished truth: Because our society values marriage, people will still do it, and single people will still be at an economic disadvantage thanks to almost all married households having two incomes. That second income is a tremendous economic advantage over anybody who remains single, and it continues well after retirement. A living together situation is not the same thing as somebody who has lived his or her entire life alone and is self-supporting or is the same thing as somebody who has married. Most people who live together don't remain single all their lives but either eventually marry the partner or marry somebody else. Many if not most "live togethers" use it as a trial period before they eventually marry.

I really don't think many people truly understand how much the economy has changed to where it is absolutely devastating if you find yourself in your fifties or sixties, and you don't have the advantage of a working or a retired spouse. It is very difficult, very scary shit when you rely only on yourself and nobody will hire you because you are considered "too old." It is even worse for women because they are already at a disadvantage economically thanks to discrimination in the workplace.

The sixties' and seventies' move toward more choice in how we live our lives didn't forecast the fundamental changes in our economy to where it is virtually mandatory you have to be married or at least have a working partner in order to survive. Unless you are a trust fund baby, it is almost impossible to survive as a never married adult in this country.

I don't regret being single, but it is virtually impossible to survive without another income to cushion the blow.

The second income is really the only true advantage of being married to being single other than the tax advantage, and it is significant.

Life Without the Possibility of Parole

They probably were a happy couple, but spending 79 years with the same person is just mindboggling to contemplate.

Take a look at the picture. They weren't exactly lovey-dovey. Ol' Wilbur wasn't the dominant one in the marriage:

Theresa Faiss’ marriage to former state Sen. Wilbur Faiss lasted more than some lifetimes, and earned congratulations from the president. Just months after being recognized as being the longest married couple in America, the matriarch of the Faiss family has died in Las Vegas at the age of 97.

The couple were honored in January by the Worldwide Marriage Encounter as being the longest-married couple for 2012. They were married for 79 years.

Maybe they really were happy together; however, many couples back in their day stayed together out of force of habit or because of the kids or because of fear of scandal.

It's the Money, Not Marriage, Stupid

that explains why single-parent families, let alone single adults without kids, fare much more poorly economically than those comfortable married couples who could wind up in the exact same situation given the worsening economy. Two incomes provide a higher standard of living than one. It ain't rocket science.

The article is pure idiocy. Most single-parent households are as a result of divorce or a spouse having died, not because of women "choosing" to be single and having children alone. Yes, it is true the Times and other media often glorify women who "choose" to be single mothers, as long as they have glamorous careers (and typically a trust fund to fall back on). That may encourage less well-off, young women to go it alone when they shouldn't, but shaming these women for a shitty economy is not the way to go.

By the way, those in the article who brag about their luxurious lifestyles being married could well find themselves in the same situation the way this country is headed. It doesn't take much for the house of cards to collapse on top of them.

I Suspect There is Less Than What Meets the Eye

in the so-called "surge" of out-of-wedlock births for the under-30 crowd.

In the "good old days" of the 1950s and early sixties, many, many shotgun marriages resulted when the female got pregnant. I suspect many of the women who do have children out of wedlock these days are living with and will eventually marry the fathers.

The article points out to economic factors for people not getting married, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense when two incomes are always cheaper than one, assuming both parties are working.

There is a touch of garbage in the article which promotes the idea a safety net for the poor "encourages" out-of-wedlock births and "dependency." Since the benefits are meager, that old chestnut needs to be thrown in the trash where it belongs.

Sign of the Times

The percentage of adults in the United States who are currently married is at an all-time low.

It is not surprising given the worsening economic climate.

Still, the average age of first marriage is still too young, with 26.5 for women and 28.7 for men although a far cry from the fifties and early sixties.

Pedophilia Meets Necrophilia

I borrowed that phrase from some wit who aptly characterized the "engagement" of Hugh Hefner to some nobody Playmate who is about 1/4 his age.  If this were an 84-year-old woman who took on a 24-year-old man, people would be outraged and the couple would be subject to ridicule.  But when it is a "man" or rather a man who looks like a corpse (and there are many men who look far better at that age than Hefner, including my former landlord), it's okay.

To try and justify this makes me absolutely sick to my stomach.  If Hef weren't a millionaire publisher who happened to make his fortune in trafficking in naked women's images but a plumber or even a lawyer, people would be offended.  But robbing the cradle is okay as long as the man is filthy rich.

If his new bride Crystal doesn't take on a lover her own age while "married" to this corpse, she's a bigger fool than I ever thought possible.

I wonder what his first wife, Mildred Williams Hefner, thinks of this latest news, assuming she is alive.

This bit from Wikipedia may explain why Hef is so fucked up in the head when it comes to women:

Hefner married Northwestern University student Mildred Williams in 1949. They had two children, Christie (born November 8, 1952) and David (born August 30, 1955). Before the wedding, Mildred confessed that she had had an affair while he was away in the Army; he called the admission "the most devastating moment of my life." A 2006 E! True Hollywood Story profile of Hefner revealed that Mildred allowed him to sleep with other women, out of guilt for her infidelity and in the hopes that it would preserve their marriage. They divorced in 1959. 

I read someplace he was actually a virgin when he married, so his wife's transgression had to have hurt him a lot.

Still, I can't justify his preying on women young enough to be his great-granddaughters.

Another Study

tries to scare people into getting married because, after all, getting married makes people live longer than if they're are not, especially if they are widowed.

This often-promoted idea by researchers is easily explained without having to resort to the nonsense that marriage per se is better for all people. It simply means that if one is living alone and gets seriously ill, there is no one around to call 911. Even if one isn't seriously ill, there is not another person around to nag him or her to see the doctor.

Simply living alone doesn't mean isolation, though. With some widowed people, especially those married for a long time, it might be too much of a jolt to be alone after having somebody around for decades on end. There needs to be a better support system for those people who find themselves on their own after a lifetime of putting up with somebody else.

link.

Women Haven't Come a Long Way

when a survey such as this one says half of respondents believe they should be legally required to take their husband's surname when the marry.

This is the USA Today report:

Laura Hamilton, a sociology researcher at Indiana University and one of the study authors, says that while gender-neutral terms such as "chairperson" have become commonplace, the same logic hasn't carried over to name change.

"One of the most interesting things is that a lot of people assume that because language in general is gender-neutral, that name change would also be one of those things in which attitudes would be shifting towards being much more liberal," she says.

But she says some studies have found that younger women are as likely or more likely to change their name when they marry as their baby boom counterparts. "It's not a straight age trend."

Good lord. I swear I am living in a time warp and it's 1970 all over again.

Do You Want Cheese with Your Whine,

Amy.

She bitches and moans about marriage and all of the benefits going with it and the social pressure to marry, but she does it anyway. So much for "principles."

The ONLY real advantage to getting married is economic, provided both spouses are working. The standard of living is generally higher, but if one of the spouses should be unemployed, there is still wage income in the household to keep afloat. It is MUCH, MUCH, MUCH more difficult economically to remain single.

Not that I am sorry I am, but I have gone through much more difficult times financially because of it. However, I don't care for the lack of privacy tradeoff, etc., that necessarily comes with marriage.

But I am not whining about how society stacks things in marriage's favor, mostly because of society's desire to perpetuate itself through those children produced in most marriages, like dear Amy.

For Those Who Suffer From Insomnia

I present this article decrying all of this adultery in the country and lamenting the sorry state of marriage, the same old stuff we heard about for decades and decades.

In other words, where there are sex scandals involving politicians, Caitlin Flanagan is sure to follow with some words of wisdom.

At least where cheating men are concerned, as long as there are women who are stupid enough to be used, both the wife and the "other woman," then there will be men who will use them.