Something that I’ve been noticing more and more, especially in the younger 20-something crowd, is that more and more households are not married, yet raising kids.

I should know - I was in one!

Interestingly enough, this is not just a biased observation it seems. According to MSN Dating & Personals - “The recent report of a Census Bureau survey found that married-couple households in the U.S. are now outnumbered. A hair more than half — 50.3 percent — of households are headed by unmarried people, and 31.7 percent of American children are being raised in unmarried homes. … Sure enough, the number of people reporting themselves as part of unmarried couples spiked about 14 percent in the past six years.”

Now, back to my example. In those instances, this was not by design. Most of the time the family started off by accident, be it misunderstanding of contraception effectiveness, reckless disregard, or just being caught up in the heat of things. However, as the families adapted, the parents typically went through growing up together and today are, in all of my examples, split up. Some have re-married or married for the first time with other people, while others have just been focusing on providing for the children.

Marriage is a scary ordeal. The even scarier truth is that in today’s society - there is really no benefit at all for a man by being married. There is nothing he can gain from marriage, that he can’t from being unmarried. The Man’s No-Nonsense Guide is one of my favorite books covering this subject. The truth is that, in the age of the equal female, marriage is no longer needed to secure the benefits most men in the past longed for.

As more and more states push more and more laws making marriage harder on the person who makes (or has the potential to make) the most in a relationship, the larger number of men go running for the hills. Unwitting victims in a war of the outspoken, because men usually make up the lion’s share of the family income (or at least will once the babies are born and the family starts), the idea of a life-long marriage daily becomes that much more of an impossibility.

I’m going to touch on this in a few other articles, but from my own personal experience, I’ve found a few distinct reasons that make an unmarried household a happier one.

Reason One: Marriage… means DIVORCE!

• Statistics are showing that the younger generation are morons. Marriage is not as beautiful as it looks (though the wedding may be), and when the reality sets in, there are only two ways out: Death and Divorce. If you never have to worry about marriage - you never have to worry about divorce. Ignore anyone that tries you to do something you do not want to do. Especially when it involves something as serious as marriage. If they jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?

Reason Two: Marriage just ain’t what it used to be

• 50 years ago, the idea of taking a man to court to get the house, the car, and half of all his future earnings, would have been ludicrous. Odd too, many of those couples still alive… never have been divorced. The feminist movement by and large has changed the culture to allow a woman more rights. This isn’t a BAD thing, but when you tilt that balance, you toss chivalry out the window and start thinking numbers. Love isn’t about numbers and shouldn’t be reduced to that. Women now have more rights in divorce and more power. Men now have less power in marriage and less reasons to get married as a result. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Reason Three: The sex will only get worse and less frequent

• “Nearly half (44%) of married people surveyed say that their sex lives have decreased while a further one in ten married couples are having no sex at all. These figures are particularly worrying for men, with “lack of sex” being cited as the single biggest factor in relationship breakdown.”

  This is just the sad truth. Just as women want roses and massages, men want steak and blowjobs. As the ratio of those lovely gifts degenerates, so does the interest. Maybe she won’t lose the baby weight and you’re stuck with a wife that’s 50 pounds heavier. Maybe she’s grown tired of what used to be ‘cute’ and now nags you all the time.

  Either way, as reality sets in, you don’t truly know that the other person won’t live up to the expectations you had for them in the marriage. Maybe the simple things like BJs and roses should be in the pre-nup next to the money. Otherwise, you may end up facing the dreaded Vaginamony.

So what now? Well, it’s time to think. Something obviously isn’t working. After all, even after women receive more and more rights, are able to take more and more from the men they were married to, why is it that wives file for divorce in approximately 2/3 of the cases each year?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not shoveling blame on the women. It’s the men that are stupid enough to lock themselves into an arrangement that is as dangerous as marriage is, without waiting several years. You may lose many a lover when your partner doesn’t want to wait a few extra years. Learn to deal with it. When you run into her at the bank years from now while you’re cashing 100% of your paycheck and she’s cashing her alimony check - be happy that check didn’t come from your wallet.

Tags: divorce, marriage, men, women, wife, husband, cheating, infidelity, divorce, statistics, sex