A good reason not to marry: Math.

[CatsPawParticipant 423]

Hi guys,
I was just making for fun a thought experiment and I wondered if you guys are interested in trying it as well.

I never really used math much, but lately I decided to use excel to calculate what % of every marriage I have first hand experience that end poorly and when I first noticed it was going poorly.
I also added Kids and the amount of kids to the equation to have a few more variables to work with.
The sample was not large, so I was a bit skeptical about its appliance to general public (perhaps this will change with some data from other members).

I also find this interesting since I cant really trust the data that comes from “magazines” and so on because they do not tell you the parameters that were taken in consideration (for example, magazines say that 50% of marriages end up in divorce, but they dont see if marriages are good or not).

So, here is the simple test:

If marriage ends, one party or both parties are unhappy (visibly) thats a bad marriage.
If not we can at least give it the benefit of the doubt that its good.

Another variable is how many years the marriage has been going on.
Another is if they have kids, how many, and for how long.

I got 8 bad, 1 good (maybe). The bad are 100% confirmed, the 1 good so far seems solid, but I have some doubts. I am going to be generous and take it at face value.

All have kids, cant confirm how long it took since marriage till deterioration of the relationship (I dont know them that long or have not kept in touch enough for it).
So in my case I can only say that 1 out of 9 marriages seems to be going well after having kids.

Thats an 11.11% success rate. Anyone else can drop in their own?

[CatsPawParticipant 423]

Even thou I was looking for mode data, I accept the unicorn as valid, even if only from the fact it made me smile.

[solitudeParticipant 346]

That 50% number the media spews is a load of crap. They never mention the maximum amount of years in their statements. A divorce after 35 years is still a divorce.

My guess is that number is closer to 80% once you remove the over 55 generation who’s women are completely different.

I don’t know a single man who’s satisfied with their marital life.

[BeerParticipant 11832]

solitude wrote:

My guess is that number is closer to 80% once you remove the over 55 generation who’s women are completely different.

That was always my perception of it as well. The odds of getting a decent wife/marriage seemed a lot better pre-feminism, but unfortunately they’re all old enough to be my grandmother at this point. As a young man today looking at my peers, the odds of having a marriage that doesn’t end in divorce or me regretting it seems like its less than 1%. I know one guy under 50 who I wouldn’t mind trading places with…but its because his wife makes 250k a year and he’s a “stay at home dad,” even though she gets home from work and does all the cooking and cleaning lol. I fully expect her to divorce him in a few years when the kids are in college but he’ll end up with 20 years off of work and half of what she earned after that marriage ends.

[xlrsnbrgParticipant 1786]

On top of that a lot of people don’t divorce due to not upsetting the kids, shame, costs, family or religious pressure etc. It doesn’t mean they are happy, it just means they can survive in the marriage.

A man shouldn't make his life's objective to be on the side of the majority, but to avoid finding himself in the ranks of the insane. (Marcus Aurelius)

[narwhalParticipant]

“Never tell me the odds” – Han Solo.

I understand the desire to break it down into simple math, but the truth of the matter is that there are a huge number of factors that would impact the success of a marriage. How old you are, how long you date, who you marry, when you have kids, your financial security….could go on for ever. All of them will change the equation. When it comes down to it, you really have to evaluate the specifics of the 2 individuals involved and take a best guess.

However, you’re looking at this the wrong way. If you’re to evaluate whether an investment was successful or not, you compare taking the investment vs doing nothing with the money. Likewise, a marriage isn’t good or the right choice if it ends up not being bad. No, the marriage is a success if the man is happier with his life for having married then if he had never married at all.

Ok. Then do it.

[CatsPawParticipant 423]

Narwhal, I agree that you could break it down a lot more, but even if we dont go into those details, so far im at 11.11% (in other words, THAT is the best case scenario).
Im just curious to see how it stacks with other peoples first hand knowledge.

[Red pill cossackParticipant 0]

well…a good reason not to get married is you have more money to pay for the things you want in life.

[Won'tGetFooledAgainParticipant 3293]

I agree that the divorce statistics are skewed by our parents generation who would stay married no matter what. With the introduction of no fault divorce, women have realised they can get back on the carousel and keep the house, children and get alimony.

I would estimate that if you only counted people who got married in the last 20 years the percentage would be a lot higher than 50%

Using my ex wife’s family as an example I get the following figures.

Ex Wife – 1 marriage, 1 divorce
Her Dad – 3 Marriages, 3 Divorces
Her Mum – 2 Marriages, 2 Divorces
Her Youngest Sister – 1 Marriage, 1 Divorce
Her Eldest Sister – 3 Marriages, 2 Divorces (Only got married to number 3 a year ago)

So I make that a 90% failure rate, and inevitable 100% rate in a few years.

I would say the average marriage seems to last around 8 years in my experience. It tends to be just as the children start full time school and the wife gets time on her hands and decides she is not happy with her lot in life. They worry about their diminishing SMV and crave the excitement of one final ride on the carousel before it is too late.

For women, everything eventually boils down to Alpha Fucks, Beta Bucks.

[BeeParticipant 700]

In my own experience, almost 14 years in…. I’d say 5 years have been really good, 5 years ok, and 4 years truly awful.

These aren’t continuous segments of time. But 4 solid years really unpleasant and five just going though the motions.

[OgreParticipant 5863]

I’ve known hundreds of people over the span of my life and a lot of people open up to me because of my personality. Your ten to 11 percent estimate is probably close to correct.

For a quick and short examination I’ll put personal and close examples out.

Both sets of my grand parents were married until the death of the first
My parents- Married after 48 years
My In-Laws- Married after 60+ years
SIL- Second marriage, dude’s loaded 7 years
BIL- Two previous marriages for 20 years total, re-marrying in August
BIL 2- Didn’t marry until 38, still going after 17 but she got huge
BIL 3- Married 5 times
BIL 4- Married for 17 years, remarried for 6 years
My marriage- Celebrating (?) 25 years. Youngest is 15, I wonder what my timeline is considering my presence here. 😉
Oldest Daughter- two marriages both under 2 years at 23 years old
Long time friends- 75 percent divorce rate
Other acquaintances- 80-90 percent overall divorce rate

My math says the longer ago you married, the more likely you are to stay married. I’ve told friends and family that I wouldn’t ever do it again… and I won’t.

@Beer- your friend sounds like he’s doing well. When she decides to divorce his lifestyle won’t take much of a hit as long as the courts are ‘fair’.

I failed to realize in my youth that I was the prize. I was going to work. I was going to earn. Little did I realize that due to feminism, that no longer meant I had to share. Road soon, Desert after.

[mgtow_85Participant 752]

So far, the math actually gives my family pretty good odds, but as we all know, the risk is still the scariest part.
Here’s my list:

My mom: Divorced 4 times. Bitter as hell about it too.

My dad: Divorced once. And once was all it took.
But let’s go further back at first…

My grandparents on my mom’s side: Happily married for 40 years and devoted to each other until my grandmother died in a car crash. Grandfather remarried a decade later. Happily married in that marriage until his death 3 years ago.

My grandparents on my dad’s side: Happily married for nearly 50 years before the grandpa died from a heart illness. Grandma never remarried.

More recent…

Youngest sister: Currently 21 years old. Has a live-in boyfriend. Been dating for nearly 4 years. No talk of marriage. My sister actually seems more interested in working for a living and hanging out with her boyfriend instead of pushing marriage on him.

Middle sister: Age 28. Married for just over ten years. Five kids. They actually do seem pretty happy in their marriage. My oldest niece says they laugh and kiss a lot. The husband works two jobs. They’re both major video gamers as well.

Older sister: Age 32. Married for nearly two years starting in August. No kids yet. They have their standard arguments, but nothing really serious. They just seem to bicker for a few minutes about any subject at random and then they forget about it. We’ll see how it goes in a few more years though.

Me: Nearly 31 years old. Never married. Engaged once almost 11 years ago, but the fiancee was a cheating bitch in the last week before the wedding date. 9 different relationships, never serious at all, and none of which lasted longer than 3 weeks. MGTOW at heart. Fiercely independent and self-sufficient.

I have three brothers, but one is serving a 25-to-life prison sentence, the other one is committed in a mental hospital for perhaps a permanent stay, and the other one is on-and-off relationships, constantly out of work due to “anger issues”, and two broken engagements, and we barely ever talk at all. It’s like he dropped off the face of the Earth in the past year. The math isn’t good for them in a mental sense, obviously, and none of them are considered marriageable.

But given the circumstances, I’d say the divorce rate in my family, including all cousins and aunts and uncles, is somewhat less than 30 percent. The ones that are married seem happy enough, but there are never pictures taken of them in the bad times, right? And I have no reason to believe that if I got married, it would be some big success just because three-quarters of my extended family and relatives managed to escape the clutches of divorce court. Everyone’s experiences are different.

[RealityBitesParticipant 2198]

I did a series of polls on a site with a lot of members. The stats that I collected pretty much were:
50% of all first marriages fail in divorce
67% of all 2nd marriages end in divorce
75% of all 3rd marriages end up in divorce

Of all of the intact marriages remaining roughly 50% were unhappy. From the above numbers that makes 75% of all first marriages are unhappy ones, 84% of all 2nd marriages are unhappy, and 88% of all 3rd marriages are unhappy.

Most common reason for staying together was either it was for the kids, or that it was “cheaper to keep her”
In all 3 cases women were the primary initiators of divorce with 70% for initiating all divorces in the 1st marriage. (it goes up from there)

Most men reported being blindsided to the divorce and the cheating. Many men ended up tolerating years of abuse and no sex. Most couples put on a false front of marital happiness when out on public, but when in private it was a different story.

Large numbers of men reported financial infidelity by their wives skimming money out of joint accounts.

My sample size was huge: I had about 23,000 participants. I forgot the numbers for length of marriage and how it broke down.

[EyeswideopenParticipant 2930]

Won'tGetFooledAgain wrote:

I would say the average marriage seems to last around 8 years in my experience. It tends to be just as the children start full time school and the wife gets time on her hands and decides she is not happy with her lot in life. They worry about their diminishing SMV and crave the excitement of one final ride on the carousel before it is too late.

Agreed 100%, this was the basic length of my relationship+marriage. 7 year itch has some basis in annidotical evidence.

If you stop to think about it from an evolutionary perspective it is consistent. Couple pair bonds, approx. one year mate/gestating period and 6 years rearing. A 6 year old has language, mobility (on the hunt) and is capable of a certain degree of autonomy so mom can focus on a new infant via a new partner for genetic diversity.

Feminism essential removed all social conventions/restraints and returned women to “animalistic states”.

- Marriage is described as an institution. You would have to be crazy to be commited to it. -"If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal. Not people or things" Albert Einstein

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