The Married Man Sex Life Primer 2011 (47 page)

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Authors: Athol Kay

BOOK: The Married Man Sex Life Primer 2011
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(29.1) Wife Choice is Critical

 

Your choice of wife is the biggest decision of your life. Who you marry will shape your life forever in ways you can’t yet imagine.

 

Also for men, the ugly truth is the way marriage law and family court currently work, getting married puts you in a very vulnerable position. Your trust in the character of your wife and your ability to maintain her positive interest in you, amount to your best, and perhaps only, defense against some very nasty outcomes.

 

Unless you are completely confident in your choice of wife and ability to maintain your relationship, I advise you not to get married at all.
(29.2) Waking Up to the Marriage Matrix

 

Take the blue pill
– Continue your belief that simply being married will make everything work out for the best and that divorce is something that happens to other people.

 

Take the red pill
- If you’re ready to know the truth about modern marriage, read on. But understand that you can never go back to not knowing. Some of this chapter may be quite disturbing.
(29.3) Law Defined What was Marriage 1.0

 

Back when my grandparents married, marriage was a fairly well understood thing. Apart from your partner exhibiting provably horrid behavior, like cheating, insanity or murder, marriage was for life. Sex was assumed as a husbandly right that wives were required to submit to. Adultery was illegal and pre-marital sex was not exactly illegal, but carried significant social sanction as it risked pregnancy. In general she stayed home and raised the kids, while he went out to work and pulled a paycheck for the family. Most couples just never even thought about splitting up, because essentially you couldn’t. That was “Marriage 1.0.”

 

While all that is becoming ancient history, it’s important to understand that Marriage 1.0 was not just a social creation, but a legally defined structure that spelled out what “marriage” was.

 

With modern marriage, a.k.a. “Marriage 2.0”, nearly all the legal rules of Marriage 1.0 have changed. In some ways these changes are good and valuable, in other ways there have been a mess of unintended consequences that undermine the very institution that marriage law is meant to define and support. Marriage 2.0 is the era of no-fault divorce law, adultery laws repealed, marital rape laws added and a divorce industry that profits off of protracted legal battles.

 

If the downside of Marriage 1.0 was that it shackled couples together regardless of happiness and enjoyment of each other, at least it used sex as an enticement to become and stay married. The downside of Marriage 2.0 is that what is intended as a permanent arrangement is becoming increasingly temporary. Plus as the possibility of having sex is very clearly no longer confined to married couples, marriage is slowly stripped of its innate eroticism. There should be little wonder that divorce is so common now.
(29.4) Seeing the Reality of Modern Marriage

 

The trap for people getting married today is that they are going into a Marriage 2.0 relationship, but they often have the romantic illusion that they are going into a Marriage 1.0 relationship. Personally I’m no different. When Jennifer and I married, I just assumed we would be together until one of us died…that we would be each other’s only sexual partner forever. For us that has worked out great, but if either one of us had decided to call it quits, our Marriage 1.0 fantasy would have instantly turned into a Marriage 2.0 reality with heartbreak steak and a side serving of lawyers.

 

While I do believe in love, experience romantic feelings and am pleased at the idea of my friends falling in love getting married, I don’t look at marriage with a pair of rose colored spectacles. There is good in Marriage 2.0, but also a lot of potential very bad as well. Increasingly the way most men lose their marital rose colored spectacles is by having them smashed off their face by (1) her initiating a divorce, (2) discovering her infidelity, (3) the endless clamping of her legs in the shut position or (4) her becoming unhappy about everything he does and undergoing a transformation into a screeching pterodactyl. The unlucky man experiences all four as Marriage 2.0 schools him into reality.
This is what can happen when you take the blue pill.

 

Importantly, men are very much taught to respect and place women on a pedestal when it comes to relationships and many simply cannot comprehend their wives ever struggling with issues of commitment and fidelity. Many men have simply no idea that what they see as a “happy marriage” is a hair’s breadth away from her simply walking away. When she leaves, they are emotionally shattered with raw disbelief that such a thing could even be happening to them.

 

Accept reality, bid Marriage 1.0 a fond farewell and learn about what Marriage 2.0 really is all about. Take the red pill. Adapt and become stronger.
(29.5) The Law Defines Marriage 2.0

 

Making our job of understanding marriage both easier and harder is marriage law. Please bear in mind that laws do vary from state to state and that I am talking in
very
general terms and not offering legal advice here.

 

There are strong biological hormones that create a pair bonding between a man and a woman. A couple can do all sorts of things to forge a relationship together - living together, having children together, buying property together and joining a social network as a couple - but none of that means they are married.

 

Modern marriage is a legal creation, legally defined and constructed by the process of law. The way you are married and what being married means was decided by your local politicians and signed into law. You just happened to agree to abide by whatever it was they decided marriage is. Marriage law does vary from state to state, but typically it requires a state authorized marriage celebrant, a statement of mutual agreement to be married, and a small amount of paperwork. It is remarkably easy to become married with what amounts to a do-it-yourself legal filing and is less complicated than getting new license plates for your car.

 

Marriages are also dissolved by legal process called divorce, as I’m sure you know, and divorce is where any romantic and idealistic notions end as the cold legality of the actual agreement comes to light. Divorce stands in stark contrast to the mood of a wedding, not only because of the joy of the occasion, but because weddings can have a fantasy experience at their core while divorce is reality based.
(29.6) Weddings 2.0 are a Marriage 1.0 Fantasy Day

 

At the wedding, what both the bride and groom say to each other about marriage, think about marriage, believe about marriage and hope about marriage, is at best simply a verbal agreement. A couple can make their own vows and say them to each other, but while this is an emotionally touching experience, the vows are a mere fantasy of what the actual marriage agreement is. The actual marriage agreement the couple makes is what is defined as the agreement by marriage law. The vows are just some sort of conversation you had before you signed the marriage certificate; not admissible in court. To put it in plain English, a couple can pledge to each other
“until death do us part”,
but if they married in a no fault divorce state, the true agreement is
, “until someone files for divorce.”

 

It doesn’t matter if you were married with an Elvis impersonator in Las Vegas, the Town Clerk, or Moses popped down for a bit to marry you. It doesn’t matter if your vows are in the original Latin, you make up your own, or you sing “Puff the Magic Dragon” to each other. Your marriage agreement is whatever marriage law says it is.

 

Even more sobering is that if marriage law changes during the course of your marriage, the legal agreement between you and your spouse also changes retroactively. For example, my grandparents married when divorce was only allowable for provable fault. So their real marriage agreement was
“until death do us part or provable fault.”
Some decades later no fault divorce was signed into law, so their marriage agreement was changed on them to
“until death do us part, or provable fault, or for no good reason… just whatever, I’m tired of this.”
Their consent was not required in order to have their marriage agreement changed on them.
(29.7) Marriage Law is Vague

 

Marriage law is kind of odd in that it usually doesn’t really define what marriage is for. I live in Connecticut and my research into Connecticut Law suggests that being married allows you to enjoy the
“rights, benefits and privileges”
of being married. Though what those
“rights, benefits and privileges”
are, aren’t actually defined under marriage law. The legal benefits and responsibilities of being married are defined across hundreds of other laws rather than within marriage law itself.

 

If for example a marriage license was a fishing license, it wouldn’t actually spell out things like when you could fish, or what size fish was too small, or what the daily limit was. It would just say
“This is a fishing license. Please enjoy your fishing license.”
Then in a law about use of public waterways, there could be a clause that stated
“People with fishing licenses may fish.”
It’s a very odd way of organizing things.

 

Even more bizarre is that in marriage law there is minimal reference to having sex. Despite the fact that for centuries marriage has been seen as the socially legitimate context to have sexual relations, marriage law doesn’t actually say that a marriage license allows you to have sex with your spouse. Unless of course it falls under that
“rights, benefits and privileges”
thing, but even that seems a little hazy.
(29.8) Your Legally “Open Marriage”

 

Many older laws also had adultery defined as a criminal act, meaning having sex with someone else’s spouse was illegal, so by implied default this meant your spouse was required to be sexually faithful to you. Now that adultery laws have been largely removed from law in every state, all that is left is merely a
social expectation
of sexual fidelity, but not a
legal
requirement of sexual fidelity.

 

So in one sense, all marriages are “open marriages” whether you want them to be or not. Your wife can have sex with another man and she very likely wouldn’t have broken any laws or the legal marriage agreement by doing so. She could have a long torrid affair and when you file your taxes together, the IRS isn’t going to kick them back to you because she voided the marriage agreement by cheating on you. It’s just up to you to decide whether or not you want to continue on with the marriage or file for divorce.

 

Unless your state defines infidelity as a reason to apply for an “at fault” divorce, there are no additional legal consequences for a wife being unfaithful to her husband other than risking divorce if caught. In a legal sense she would not have broken the marriage agreement seeing as sexual exclusivity doesn’t seem to be even mentioned in marriage law. It’s like that fishing license that says nothing about fish.
(29.9) No Guarantee to Have Sex

 

Another change in marriage law is the addition of marital rape as a potential charge. For centuries it was ruled that it was impossible for a husband to rape a wife because sexual consent was always assumed. A woman becoming a wife had legally agreed to a lifetime of sexual availability, so if he had to get physical with her and force sex to get his “rights, benefits and privileges,” then so be it.

 

Obviously being raped is a terrible thing for a woman to suffer through and the ruling that a woman can be raped by her husband has serious merit. However the unexpected consequence of marital rape law was the undoing of the concept that generally ongoing sexual relations were always implied as a requirement of marriage. Thus a wife could decline sex to her husband… once, twice, or perhaps permanently. So a man may have very well married with the idea that a lifetime of sexual compatibility lies ahead of him, but there’s no requirement that she has to perform that role unless she wants to. As many men learn to their anguish, a wife can simply say “No”… forever.

 

So once again… marriage law is like that fishing license that says nothing about fish.
(29.10) Oops! You got Married by Accident

 

Depending on the state, there can also be cohabitation laws that kick in after a certain number of years living together. After that, the cohabitation law may essentially backdoor you into a de facto marriage agreement without you being fully aware of the law.

 

So for example, if your state has a cohabitation law that after five years of living together as a purposely unmarried couple, you are granted what amounts to the same legal rules as being married… then congratulations to the happy couple. Now your girlfriend can divorce you! You don’t look excited by that...

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