I can't get married and neither can my friends.

[stringsofcoins]

I joined the church last year and recently have found myself in a bind.  I feel like I'm rebelling against the teachings of our living prophet and it's making me feel sick.

 

I'm in my early thirties.  All of my friends are in their early thirties.  We are all bachelors.  We choose this because we feel that we are forced to choose this.  We have all watched our fathers, our uncles, our friends, and our brothers who chose marriage have their lives completely destroyed by the family court systems.  Their children have been taken from them but they are still forced to pay.  In every single case, and I am referring to seven people from my group, every single case the divorce was ultimately caused by the wife cheating.  And then, despite the fact that it is the wife who broke her marriage vows and her covenants, the family court systems have routinely destroyed the man and rewarded the wife.

 

So we have all decided to not get married.  We don't see why we should.  What do we gain from marriage?  We don't gain anything.  There is no protection from adultery, there is no enforcement of fidelity, and the women get the children 100% of the time.  Even if they are a drunken meth addict with a huge rap sheet while the husband is a hard working earner.  Typically the wives will state something like, "my husband worked too much" or "my husband was emotionally distant" or "money problems/kid problems stressed me out", but none of these are reasons to divorce.  The real reason is that the wife either had sex with another man or wanted to have sex with another man.

 

So we all know that we gain nothing from a divorce except that we do not have to break the laws of chastity to engage in sexual activity.  Most of us have simply become voluntarily celibate.  I myself became involuntarily celibate so that I could meet my baptismal covenants.  But we all struggle and many men simply choose to have sex outside of marriage because we know that marriage is a scam and the family courts will destroy us at our wives whim.

 

I mean if your wife gets "bored" your life is going to be destroyed.  Because your wife got "bored".  How are we supposed to marry?

 

I see the church fighting gay marriage but I see this as a useless battle.  The church lost this battle when they accepted that it's acceptable to get married and divorced based on feelings alone.  Feelings that wax and wane.  So if marriage is about feelings and not about a duty to God, family, and children, then how can the church oppose two people getting married for "feelings"?  I see that as the way the church has already lost the gay marriage debate.  Marriage is about "love", right?  I do not see this anywhere in the scriptures.  I see marriage as duty first and foremost.  Marriage is supposed to be the place to explore love.  Not the ultimate expression of it.

 

Yesterday I stopped by Deseret Book after visiting the temple for Elder Perry's funeral and looked through the movies.  There for sale was a movie called Fireproof.  This is a movie that exalts a woman having an affair, cheating on her husband and committing a grievous sin, but it is framed in such a way that this woman's terrible sin is actually her "leading" her husband back to Christ and strengthening her marriage.  Deseret Book is selling a movie that promotes a woman cheating on her husband.  I complained to the manager but he had no explanation for why they are selling sin to women.

 

In secret the older married men in my ward warn me to avoid marriage at all costs.  They speak about how badly they want to divorce once their youngest child moves away and how painful this is for them.  They speak about spending ten years with their wives having a stranglehold over their families with wives who routinely threaten divorce and theft of these men's children.  They stay in very unhappy marriages with no power to fix them because they are so frightened of the incredibly sexist family court system.

 

I'm not sure what to do.  I can not support marriage and neither can any of my friends.  Not after what we've seen happen to our own fathers, to our friends, and to our brothers.  When I try to bring this up with my bishop I'm instantly dismissed with, "just wait until you find the right one".  The right one?  Again marriage is being framed as the expression of love and not the place to explore love.

 

We are lost.  We can't get married and we know it.  We can't have a sexual relationship with a woman without violating the scriptures.  Yesterday I spoke in depth with two of my friends and we spoke about how badly we wished that the living prophet would tell us to not get a state marriage, to not invite the insane family court systems to destroy our lives, but to get a spiritual marriage before God.  If only we could...

 

So what are we supposed to do?  And how come no one will talk to us about this?  We feel cast out from the church because of this.  We want families but we know that we can't have them.  If we do marry and have children then "our" children can be taken away from us at any time, for any or no reason, and we have no control over this.  We don't want to end up like our fathers.

 

Last month I was talking to one of my church sisters about this and she said to me, "we all know that the woman will always get the children even if she's an abusive drunk."  She smiled at me as she said this.  It made her happy!

 

What am I to do?  It's either remain celibate, flee to another country where the marriage laws are not shockingly sexist and insane, or violate the laws of chastity.

[Backroads]

Now, I'm in favor of getting rid of state-sponsored marriage. But any long-term committed relationship that ends, especially ones with children, will have parting issues. Perhaps not to the current extent, but imagining a spiritual ex-wife will graciously allow you full custody of children is unrealistic. And with all due respect, it sounds as if you want sex and kids without any commitment. No, I don't think you should enter marriage with such a dismal view of it. I agree the courts are unfair in such things.

But I'm not entirely sure what kind of state you are looking for. Even with no laws you'll still find yourself in negotiations.

[The Folk Prophet]

Marry the kind of girl who won't cheat on you. Problem solved.

[Guest]

There are a lot of very happily married men here that will tell you that marriage is not, in fact, a trap. 

 

I suspect the problem isn't women as a whole, but the type of women you're looking for. Celestial Barbie doesn't exist. In my experience, the guys who have the most problem finding a good wife are the ones who want a Victoria Secret model qualified, Relief Society president, Betty Crocker, who loves video games. . . you get the idea. It's fine to have a wish list, but you have to realize that you will likely have to give up some of that ideal, because the perfect woman doesn't exist, any more than you are perfect men.

 

And with that, and with tongue planted firmly in cheek, I give you:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKWmFWRVLlU

Edited June 8, 2015 by Eowyn

[Guest]

Marry the kind of girl who won't cheat on you. Problem solved.

 

Oh sure, be succinct why don't you. 

[Just_A_Guy]

Friend, it's one thing to be cautious (and even, at a certain point in time, a little discouraged); but your post above goes further than that.  It flirts with downright animus towards women.

• In spite of what your friends and men's rights websites may tell you--divorce is just as emotionally and economically catastrophic for women as it is for men.  In fact, in most cases, more so--even when it is actually the woman who initiates the divorce.  (I practice divorce law, so I'm not shooting in the blind here.)
• While it can be particularly galling for a male to have to pay spousal support, the simple fact is that a woman who puts her career on hold for 10-15 years while raising my children, deserves some help getting back on her feet if our marriage dissolves--regardless of the reason for the marriage's dissolution.  State laws and divorce court judges are (slowly) adjusting to the idea of working mothers, and though things vary from state to state--speaking generally, from a legal standpoint with regard to alimony and child custody, men are probably better off in family court now than they have been at any time in the past thirty years.
• Children are not marital property to be divided along with the house, the boat, and the 401(k).  Child custody awards center around doing what's best for the children (promoting stability and, to the extent possible, maintaining the status quo), not as an affirmation that the long-suffering, cuckolded spouse was actually Right™.  That means that, barring actual unfitness (drug use, etc--and no, adultery per se is not parental unfitness), the person who has done the bulk of the child-rearing during the marriage will wind up with primary custody of the children.  The simple fact is that--even outside of Mormonism, and even in the most progressive relationships--it is extremely rare to have a father who is more involved with the children than their mother is.  (Oh, and if an addict of a mother gets the kids over a completely clean and otherwise decent and law abiding father--either someone's lying, didn't bother to get a lawyer, or had a lawyer who fouled up colossally.  Drug use is fairly easy to prove using a follicle test--which, contrary to what you read on the interwebs, is not easy to beat--and courts do not like giving custody to unrehabilitated drug addicts.)
• Mormonism perhaps could have been more socially/politically involved as no-fault divorce gained traction--but then again, there were social and tactical/strategic reasons why it may have been in its interest to stay out of that fight (some of us, I understand, were kind of worn out over that whole ERA unpleasantness).  But secular movements aside, I would strongly disagree with your suggestion that Mormonism has reduced the theology of marriage to preoccupied with feelings or "love" at the expense of commitment.
• I've not seen Fireproof, but every synopsis/review I've read doesn't describe that movie as glorifying the wife's cheating any more than it glorifies the husband's porn use.
• These men in your ward with the miserable marriages?  I'm going to issue you a challenge:  Print your opening post to this thread and show it to each of those men, one by one, within the next week.  Ask them for their comments.  In fact, invite them to register at LDS.net and add their thoughts.  I'll bet that more than one of them will be utterly horrified that that's what you took away from their comments.
• As for the rest of your divorced acquaintances--take their stories with a grain of salt.  I've met an awful lot of women with abusive, deadbeat ex-husbands, and a lot of men with shrewish, mentally ill harpies as ex-wives.  Strangely, though--I rarely meet women who admit to have been the sort of women their ex-husbands complain about, or men who confess that they've been just what their ex-wives believe them to be.  Contrary to your average sitcom or Lifetime Channel melodrama, being involved in an affair or being an absentee-father, porn-addict of a husband isn't really something most people discuss with their best friend at the mall or on a fishing trip.
• Not everyone in a skirt is a predator/man-eater in waiting.  There are numerous spectacular, single women both in and out of the Church who do want a lifelong, equitable commitment to a good man and are more than willing to pull their own weight in such a relationship. 
• I've been married for almost thirteen years now, and I'd do it over again in a heartbeat.

Edited June 8, 2015 by Just_A_Guy

[David13]

Here in California no fault divorce has been the rule since about 1971. 

And as Just a Guy states there the law here is roughly the same.  Remember when you are out there and hear some guy lamenting about his divorce you are hearing less than 1/2 the story.  The kids could also tell you a lot that he won't tell as well.

At the peak, the divorce rate here was 50% of marriages.  I think it's less than that now.

That means that there are out there millions, and I have known dozens of happily married men and women.

It takes two to make it work.  Not one. 

And it can work for you if you believe that.  If you believe what you say in your post you won't be able to do it or make it work.

It's known as the self fulfilling prophecy.

dc

[Leah]

Boy, what a messed up, selfish, woman-hating view of life.  If you're for real.  If not,  I'd give you a D- in the creative writing department.

[NeuroTypical]

Yeah, there's a lot in your post I don't get.

 

You've been a member for a year, and have even been to the temple, and yet you don't know what to do?  You talk about all the conversations you've had with your friends, men in your ward, various women, and yet nobody will talk to you?  I mean, I want to engage you in discussion here, but you seem so entrenched and hopeless, defensive and concluded, that I don't know where to start.

 

* Your story about how "everybody" is, just flat out isn't true.  No, not all older gentlemen in the church think the way you're telling us they think.  In fact, I'd think very few of them do.

 

* I'd urge you to mature a little to the point where you don't need to stand among your friends and talk about how "we" are all in this situation.  You're an individual with your own thoughts, able to write his own story.  Have the courage of your convictions to stand by yourself.

 

* Here - let me formally be an example of someone who very much doesn't think like you.  I struggle in my marriage but it's worth it.  I'm glad I got married.  She tells me she's in for the long (eternal) haul.  

[Guest LiterateParakeet]

I belong to a group on line for LDS women who have been abused...many of them were or are in abusive marraiges. If I judged solely from that, I would share your view of marriage with men starring as the evil villains instead of the women as in your post.

The fact is life is messy. Marriage can be hard. Some partners are abusive, some cheat. But you'd be foolish too assume that is all there is to marriage.

Some marriages are wonderful. I have friends with whom we can talk about anything including sex and marriage and they are happy..very happy in their marriages. I have been married 21 years and I am very happy, my husband is too. We have 5 amazing children who are also happy. I hope you won't let your fears make you miss out on these wonderful experiences that could be yours.

Edited June 8, 2015 by LiterateParakeet

[Guest]

I'm gonna have to find out your name and all your friends. I need to make sure NOT to introduce you to my cousins.....

.... who need visas.

[Latter-Day Marriage]

It's easy to get cynical about marriage when it doesn't work out for some people close to you, but each failed marriage is the result of one or both spouses not acting as Christ would want them to.  There are a great many good marriages within the church, more so than failed ones.  My wife and I have been married for 26 years, neither one of us has come anywhere close to cheating on each other in all that time.  We've had areas that were rough spots but there was never a time we were not close or our marriage not strong.  In the past 20 years we have been in this ward I can count on one had the number of marriages that have fallen apart, and the only one that I know of where the wife cheated was one where the husband was emotionally abusive and drove her away with he behavior.

There are no guarantees, but if you are committed to living the gospel and marry somebody who is committed to living the gospel and keep your marriage as a priority in your life you have a far greater chance of success in marriage.  Those who follow after the ways of the world are going to find it hard to have a successful marriage. 

A man does gain a lot from the love and companionship of a wife, I would never want to go back to being single.  There is also great joy in having and raising children.  God did not make a mistake in instituting marriage and family, but the blessings of those things only come to those who qualify for them by obedience to God.

As for gay marriage, I think the fight to keep gay marriage illegal is lost, and that is why the church has turned their attention more to fighting to protect freedom of religion, but there is no 'fight' when it comes to the immorality of gay marriage.  The church is never going to endorse it and members who go down that path will find themselves outside the church.  The church has never taken the position that marriage and divorce are based on feelings alone.  Marriage is a covenant with God, and divorce is only acceptable in God's eyes in cases of abuse, abandonment, infidelity etc, not simply because one of them feels like divorcing.  While the church won't sit in judgement of a divorcing couple and assign blame, that couple will have to answer to God at judgment day for their actions

It's been a long time since I watched Fireproof.  It is not produced by the church, I think it is from some evangelical filmmakers.  It most certainly does not glorify adultery, in fact I don't think she actually sleeps with another man.  If I recall right, they just have conflict/temptation and she says she wants a divorce. It is a story of a man fighting to save his marriage from falling apart and succeeding at it.  The message is that if you work at making your marriage good and follow Christ you can heal even a very broken marriage.

 

Your attitude is leading you to cut off your nose to spite your face.  A strategy of avoiding failure will not lead to happiness.  Instead shed your angry and cynical mindset and pursue success.  Other people's failures and weaknesses are their own issues, you are your own person.  Get your head right and open your eyes.  Somewhere out there is a beautiful daughter of God who you can have a wonderful marriage with.  Make yourself into the kind of man she can have a wonderful marriage with first, then keep your eyes open for her.  When you find her and marry her, make your marriage and family your priority and do your part to make it work, dont' sit there and expect it to work all on it's own with no effort from you.

[sxfritz]

@stringsofcoins, you sound like my brothers. Both look at marriage the same way but one is also an inventor; a bit of a genius. He has fantastic ideas that would solve so many issues in the world - especially around energy independence. The problem is....he won't build anything because the courts favor these trolls who sue on patent rights. So, he continues to dream and feel frustrated that the world is holding him down.  ---wish I was using an anonymous account right now  :)

 

Fact is, you are too young and have a lot of life to live to be thinking you've decided on a path regarding relationships. I also see it a mistake for you to see your "friends" as permanent or that you are somehow bound with them by your current thoughts and ideas of marriage. You will meet someone with whom you will love and not want to lose. And, maybe you won't. But to blame the courts as the reason not to marry is a weak crutch that will break and is insulting to women. You know that and is why you wrote all this out to us. I hope it was therapeutic.

 

Now go out and treat the women you meet with some respect. 

[Guest]

You know those people that unleash a Silent but Deadly, then quietly leave the room?

[Leah]

I'm gonna have to find out your name and all your friends. I need to make sure NOT to introduce you to my cousins.....

.... who need visas.

These cousins of yours.....any middle-aged, single men who would be amenable to joining the church?  

[omegaseamaster75]

OP you hate women. Pretty clear, with that attitude you will never be married.

[The Folk Prophet]

OP you hate women. Pretty clear, with that attitude you will never be married.

 

Which is sad, because women are awesome!

 

And I don't mean the brainless bimbos that the world thinks are "real women".  I mean the humble, sincere, pioneer spirited, sweet, tender-hearted daughters of God.

 

Women are awesome!

 

People, on the other hand, are sniveling, bratty, nasty, self-indulgent, horrible creatures, both men and women, unless, of course, they yield to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, put off the natural man, and become as little children, willing to submit to whatsoever their Lord seeth fit to inflict upon them. To the OP, I suggest this course.

[Backroads]

OP,do you have any female friends or family?

[classylady]

Courts do not always give custody to the mothers.  My husband's ex-wife was the primary care giver to their two chidden.  Yet, my husband received full custody.  She was not a drunk nor an addict.  During their divorce there was a guardian-ad-litem for the children, and it was deemed that the children would be better off with their father.  So, that was how the judge ruled.  His ex did have 8 months to come forward and try for custody, but she chose not to.  She was not required to pay child support.  I think if she was required to pay, she would have tried for custody.  She also did not receive any alimony.

 

Now, in my sister's divorce, she received custody of the minor children, but she did not receive any alimony.  The judge ruled that she willfully chose to be underemployed, (she had a part time job rather than full), so she didn't deserve any alimony.

[AngelMarvel]

Sounds like you might want us to tell you that in YOUR circumstance... it's okay for a free roll in the hay to suit your manly lust. Poor YOU!

You make me sick! My stomach turned when I read your post. You are UNBELIEVABLY selfish.

I could go on and on and on.... but, ...

[james12]

Stringsofcoins, Please do not get married. You do not understand women, children, or marriage. Remain alone, where you can pretend to be safe from all the hurt and pain. For indeed:  

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. 

 However, know this:

But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable. (C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves)

 

[Vort]

Am I the only person on the entire list that feels compassion toward the OP? His attitude, though obviously wrong-headed, is not different in any important way from the attitude of many thousands of LDS women toward men. I assume the OP is is sincere, but even if he were trolling, he speaks the feelings of many of the sons of God who feel alienated and reviled.

 

The only cure here is to change the viewpoint, so I don't disagree factually with almost anything that has been written in response. But I think the coal-heaping on the OP's head might be counterproductive. At the risk of stating the obvious and trite, I doubt a sister expressing equivalent feelings here would be subject to quite the same level of scorn.

[David13]

I think that's what I said in my post.  He has to change his attitude.  He describes his world as a place where he can only fail.  Thus he fails.

dc

[Guest MormonGator]

Am I the only person on the entire list that feels compassion toward the OP? His attitude, though obviously wrong-headed, is not different in any important way from the attitude of many thousands of LDS women toward men. I assume the OP is is sincere, but even if he were trolling, he speaks the feelings of many of the sons of God who feel alienated and reviled.

 

The only cure here is to change the viewpoint, so I don't disagree factually with almost anything that has been written in response. But I think the coal-heaping on the OP's head might be counterproductive. At the risk of stating the obvious and trite, I doubt a sister expressing equivalent feelings here would be subject to quite the same level of scorn.

No Vort, you are 100% totally right. The drawback, and it's a big one-is there is nothing you can do about it. 

 

I learned about this double standard in eighth grade. The boys and girls in my class were having fun and :: gasp :: talking to each other without a teacher there. The boys got lectured severely, and told to do a writing assignment the girls didn't have to do. When I told the teacher it was wrong and sexist of her, she went ballistic. I never did the assignment. 

in college, you could walk the dorms and see huge amounts of negative white board comments (everyone had them on their doors) about men, while if anyone quoted any joke about a girl on theirs-armegeddon. My college roommate almost got expelled but thank GOD he contacted a free speech origination and they threatened a large, nasty lawsuit. Situation dropped.

In my personal life, I've noticed that when a man cheats on a woman, he is scum, never trust him again, he's on par with Hitler. But if a woman does it, well, her man probably ignored her and she isn't accountable for her actions, so move on.

 

Often times women do stupid things to mess up their lives, but heaven forbid you try to call someone out on it. 

 

Just get used to it. 

[Guest MormonGator]

I joined the church last year and recently have found myself in a bind.  I feel like I'm rebelling against the teachings of our living prophet and it's making me feel sick.

 

I'm in my early thirties.  All of my friends are in their early thirties.  We are all bachelors.  We choose this because we feel that we are forced to choose this.  We have all watched our fathers, our uncles, our friends, and our brothers who chose marriage have their lives completely destroyed by the family court systems.  Their children have been taken from them but they are still forced to pay.  In every single case, and I am referring to seven people from my group, every single case the divorce was ultimately caused by the wife cheating.  And then, despite the fact that it is the wife who broke her marriage vows and her covenants, the family court systems have routinely destroyed the man and rewarded the wife.

 

So we have all decided to not get married.  We don't see why we should.  What do we gain from marriage?  We don't gain anything.  There is no protection from adultery, there is no enforcement of fidelity, and the women get the children 100% of the time.  Even if they are a drunken meth addict with a huge rap sheet while the husband is a hard working earner.  Typically the wives will state something like, "my husband worked too much" or "my husband was emotionally distant" or "money problems/kid problems stressed me out", but none of these are reasons to divorce.  The real reason is that the wife either had sex with another man or wanted to have sex with another man.

 

So we all know that we gain nothing from a divorce except that we do not have to break the laws of chastity to engage in sexual activity.  Most of us have simply become voluntarily celibate.  I myself became involuntarily celibate so that I could meet my baptismal covenants.  But we all struggle and many men simply choose to have sex outside of marriage because we know that marriage is a scam and the family courts will destroy us at our wives whim.

 

I mean if your wife gets "bored" your life is going to be destroyed.  Because your wife got "bored".  How are we supposed to marry?

 

I see the church fighting gay marriage but I see this as a useless battle.  The church lost this battle when they accepted that it's acceptable to get married and divorced based on feelings alone.  Feelings that wax and wane.  So if marriage is about feelings and not about a duty to God, family, and children, then how can the church oppose two people getting married for "feelings"?  I see that as the way the church has already lost the gay marriage debate.  Marriage is about "love", right?  I do not see this anywhere in the scriptures.  I see marriage as duty first and foremost.  Marriage is supposed to be the place to explore love.  Not the ultimate expression of it.

 

Yesterday I stopped by Deseret Book after visiting the temple for Elder Perry's funeral and looked through the movies.  There for sale was a movie called Fireproof.  This is a movie that exalts a woman having an affair, cheating on her husband and committing a grievous sin, but it is framed in such a way that this woman's terrible sin is actually her "leading" her husband back to Christ and strengthening her marriage.  Deseret Book is selling a movie that promotes a woman cheating on her husband.  I complained to the manager but he had no explanation for why they are selling sin to women.

 

In secret the older married men in my ward warn me to avoid marriage at all costs.  They speak about how badly they want to divorce once their youngest child moves away and how painful this is for them.  They speak about spending ten years with their wives having a stranglehold over their families with wives who routinely threaten divorce and theft of these men's children.  They stay in very unhappy marriages with no power to fix them because they are so frightened of the incredibly sexist family court system.

 

I'm not sure what to do.  I can not support marriage and neither can any of my friends.  Not after what we've seen happen to our own fathers, to our friends, and to our brothers.  When I try to bring this up with my bishop I'm instantly dismissed with, "just wait until you find the right one".  The right one?  Again marriage is being framed as the expression of love and not the place to explore love.

 

We are lost.  We can't get married and we know it.  We can't have a sexual relationship with a woman without violating the scriptures.  Yesterday I spoke in depth with two of my friends and we spoke about how badly we wished that the living prophet would tell us to not get a state marriage, to not invite the insane family court systems to destroy our lives, but to get a spiritual marriage before God.  If only we could...

 

So what are we supposed to do?  And how come no one will talk to us about this?  We feel cast out from the church because of this.  We want families but we know that we can't have them.  If we do marry and have children then "our" children can be taken away from us at any time, for any or no reason, and we have no control over this.  We don't want to end up like our fathers.

 

Last month I was talking to one of my church sisters about this and she said to me, "we all know that the woman will always get the children even if she's an abusive drunk."  She smiled at me as she said this.  It made her happy!

 

What am I to do?  It's either remain celibate, flee to another country where the marriage laws are not shockingly sexist and insane, or violate the laws of chastity.

Comments on Fireproof-Yes, if I had a wife as selfish and cruel as her, I'd look at porn all day on the internet too. Terrible movie.  Badly acted, badly written, horrible message. My wife said it best "She wants to hook up with the doctor because he has cash-doesn't that make her a golddigger?" 

Truth-Women will usually get custody and the odds are heavily titled in their favor. In divorce cases, many spouses don't understand that the reason they have a nice house, two cars, and can afford vacations in Bermuda is :: the horror! :: because someone works 80 hours a week. 

Third-Change your attitude. Accept that there are double standards in life, laugh at them and find a girl who can do it too. Also, get over the whole sex thing. Having to live a life of celibacy isn't that bad. Sex is overrated. Your view on women is troubling as well, even though you make correct points here and there. 

 

My wife is the farthest thing from mainstream. She can think for herself and agrees with me about the double standard. Women like her are out there. Just find them. In fact, a big reason why our marriages works is we are both selfish. We both live by the "In order to say I love you, one must for say I" rule. We're sort of cool like that. 

 

Lastly, no one likes someone who is a negative Debbie Downer. I know people like that in my life who complain, nag and badger people all the time. Then they wonder why they are single and no one wants to be around them. 

Edited June 9, 2015 by MormonGator