There are many reasons why modern marriages fail, and many good reasons for men to avoid them. Here is another such reason:
“Effort Justification” ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effort_justification ) is the name given to the observation that humans place higher value on things (including and especially memberships in a group) for which they had to make significant sacrifice in order to gain entry.
Consider that when a man marries a woman, he makes tremendous sacrifice. He is commonly expected to purchase a engagement ring that is more than he can afford, both wedding rings, the bouquet, marriage license, the honeymoon, and on top of all that signs away half of what he owns including future income.
The woman, on the other hand, sacrifices comparatively little. She must invest time into her appearance, and into doing things with her fiancee, though these are things that she would want to do anyway. Women with no intention of marrying do this sort of thing for fun.
She does not buy him a gift that requires her to go into debt. The wedding does not cost her any money, and in fact she gets showered with gifts.
Once upon a time, there was a steep sacrifice that women made: they gave up all their opportunities to meet and marry a superior man. A veritable army of wealthy, powerful, attractive single men were forever out of her reach once she tied the knot. This cost, though implicit, was still an enormous sacrifice on her part.
No more. Now women can freely cheat with little consequence, and can easily divorce (with bonus prizes!) and upgrade to a superior man, at any time.
So what does this mean? Even if we assume that men and women are morally and emotionally equal in every way, we see that the man makes an enormous sacrifice, whereas the woman does not. We would expect, by the principle of “effort justification”, that women would not place a very high value on the marriage, and that they would frequently abandon the relationship for precisely this reason.
Which is, of course, exactly what is happening. Most divorces are initiated by women, and many of the rest are only initiated by men because the woman deliberately drives him to initiate once she decides she wants out.
It may be objected that most women work and have their own money going into a marriage, so some of the costs are shared between them, and the long-term financial commitment from the man is less (since he will get to keep more of what he brings when divorced, since they are more evenly matched).
This is only true sometimes. Working women commonly seek to marry wealthier men, and commonly stop working after the marriage, thus pushing the man’s level of sacrifice right back up (and her own even further down). And of course the ring cost is usually still one-way.
So, the end result is that that most (even if not all) marriages are doomed before they start, simply because one of the participants has not made the level of sacrifice that really drives a sense of importance into the human mind.
Given the enormous costs of a divorce, it makes no rational sense to enter into such an arrangement with someone that has no “skin in the deal.”
It is wise to fear dangerous commitments.
Greg Honda 3 years, 1 month ago.
