In her article “8 reasons straight men don’t want to get married“, Dr. Helen Smith did an excellent job summarizing the popular reasons men say they are postponing or outright declining the many charms and benefits of marriage – well, benefits for gay couples, anyway. With the recent Supreme Court decision dumping the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in favor of gay marriage, we can expect the argument that gay marriage somehow undermines straight marriage will continue to heat up.

In my opinion, this has things completely backwards – straight marriage is so badly and terminally damaged that the expansion of gay marriage will have little impact on the death of heterosexual nuptials – if anything, successful gay marriages will illuminate the many failures of hetero marriage that are causing men to flee from it.

Why is that? I’ve compiled my own, personal list of 11 additional reasons why I avoid marriage, and interestingly, my reasons are largely independent of the 8 reasons identified by Dr. Smith. Some of these reasons are deeply personal to me, but in the hopes that they might resonate with men who are conflicted on the subject of their own marital futures, I offer them up as an additional perspective as to why the single life is preferable:

1. Your wife won’t be able to manipulate you by withholding sex.

While some people (ok, women mostly) treat marriage vows as loose, conditional suggested guidelines, when I make a vow, I’m going to keep it. If it is within the capability of my mind or body, then I am both loyal and stupid enough to believe that a promise is a promise, and that “integrity” includes keeping one’s promises, especially in the face of adversity. So, if I promise fidelity to one woman, by God, the Universe, and Everything, I’m going to keep that promise.

I also have always had a large sex drive – I was hitting on my babysitters when I was 4 years old for goodness sakes. Even now in my mid-50’s the fires of passion still burn hot in me.

The combination of these two factors mean that I would be extremely vulnerable to a wife to wanted to manipulate me by denying sex – I’d have no recourse in law or morality. A man who coerces a woman into sex is viewed as a rapist, but a woman who coerces a man by withholding sex is a feminist hero?

You go, grrl. Out of my house. NOW. And no, I am not going to marry you, bitch.

2. You won’t have to lose your vintage porn collection.

My first college girlfriend got me a subscription to Playboy magazine for my birthday in 1978, and although we broke up my senior year, I collected issues of the magazine until the spring of 1992, when my cohabiting girlfriend at that time discovered them and had an extreme screaming meltdown. She kept screaming for hours as I hauled them out to a dumpster. Then, she withheld sex for six months as a punishment for my transgression. I loved her dearly but her jealousy never waned, and eventually I had to break with her, as I was unwilling to live my life in a constant state of sexual starvation.

3. You can drive any car that suits your fancy.

Until I became comfortable with the notion of Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), I often chose my car with an eye toward the sort of woman it might attract. This left me with several expensive, high-maintenance models that looked pretty but didn’t suit me. I didn’t like the cars, either.

I now drive the perfect car for me – a 2004 Prius with moderate hail damage. My Prius is now old enough and ugly enough that it is a total chick-repellent. The hail damage increases the gas mileage to the point where I can drive from Dallas to Chicago on one or two tanks of gas, perfect for the day I become a MGTOW ghost – and, it is whisper-quiet at low speeds, so quiet that later models had to add faux engine noises for safety reasons.

Of course, if you get married, your wife will withhold sex until you buy her a gas-guzzling, planet-killing SUV so that she will feel slightly safer when she totals it. She’ll hate your car, whatever it is you drive.

4. You won’t have to compromise your religious beliefs, or lack thereof.

Although my mixed-up family has deep Catholic/Lutheran roots, I’ve been an atheist since early childhood. I hear no voices in my head, divine or otherwise. Technically, I think I’m actually a non-coherentist agnostic, in that God-talk is largely nonsensical to me, but when you say “agnostic”, many believers (particularly here in the Bible Belt where I live) take that as an invitation to regale you with whatever voodoo is talking in their heads that day. My inaccurate claim to atheism is safer in the sense that it allows me to be written off as a lost cause without having to engage in gobbledygook.

Women, in my experience, are much more “spiritual” than men, in that their overwhelming anxieties drive them to seek comfort and support through faith. I don’t fault them (much) for that, but I sure as hell don’t want to marry it, or compromise my professed faith to placate hers.

5. You won’t have to watch/hold/carry/rebuild her fucking purse.

Dealing with a woman means being subjected to “female redecoration syndrome” – her constant, endless drive to change both her husband and her environment, and her oblivious dismissal of her man’s reluctance to do stupid things on her behalf. Reasonable things one might be able to work out with a reasonable woman (if such could be found), maybe, but going shoe-shopping with her when she already has a closet full of shoes? No, thank you.

6. You can undertake risky ventures without being undermined by your wife.

8 years ago an artistic entertainment district that I loved was falling on hard times just as my corporate career reached an impasse. So, I dumped my house and job and started my own entertainment business in that district. No woman would have tolerated a man who was as married to my business as I was (and continue to be) – women love commitment until it becomes slightly inconvenient for them. I know this in part because my live-in girlfriend enthusiastically supported my new business venture right up to the point where she bailed out 4 months in.

Now, I can gloat – the district is now thriving and the NYSE-listed corporation I left died in January, and my work has brought me a bit of respect. The girlfriend found a new man, picked up his meth habit, and was in prison when I last checked.

7. Your vacation time is your own.

I dislike vacationing intensely – maybe I’ve got a touch of Obsessive-Compulsive tendencies or some such, but I’m happiest when I’m working steadily and routinely. Vacationing with a wife would be agony for me even if we could agree where to go (no chance of that), and letting a wife vacation without you is marital suicide.

8. You won’t be humiliated in public by someone you loved and trusted.

When withholding sex fails to move you, or maybe she just nuts out one day, but women cannot seem to resist the urge to humiliate their husbands in public, rat on their sex lives, or whatever. Such behavior is a deep betrayal of the trust one should invest in one’s significant other, but I’ve never seen any woman ever be able to maintain the slightest degree of discretion about her husband’s quirks, foibles, or personal secrets.

9. You won’t have to serve as your wife’s proxy thug.

Women love using and testing their men by having them perform acts of violence at their behest – this gives women protection and deniability in the ensuing physical and legal melées. We see echoes of this whenever some feminist idiot wanders in here and demands we do something – anything – to stop rape, or online harassment, or whatever other bug just crawled up her thigh. This damsel-in-distress trope is nothing more than the bullshit manipulation of men; it criminalizes men and robs women of their agency.

10. You won’t suffer the marriage tax penalty – or subsidize her shoe collection.

Marriage is an economic disaster for men – not only in divorce, alimony and child support, but also in a happy marriage. Women rarely deign to marry impoverished men, or even men who earn less than they do. This means that those “lucky” married men suffer double-extra taxation – not only will your wife burn though your money, but the federal tax structure (in the US, anyway) is generally higher for the married than for two single people.

11. You won’t have to suffer her physical assaults on you.

The current feminist culture supports the right of women to physically assault men at any time for any reason. There may be good explanations for this from evolutionary psychology – women hit men when men show some emotional weakness as a way to get them to “man up” in the face of the woman’s need for a strong protector. Men are shamed and discouraged from reporting these assaults, and state and federal laws driven by the Duluth Model of gender violence often result in the arrest of battered men, rather than the women who attacked them.

***

Well, that about covers it for now, except for the shaming: Yes, I’m a selfish, mean bastard. I’m so ugly, stupid and nerdy that no woman would want me. I’m missing out on so much love/personal growth/sex/companionship. I’m probably gay. Or, whatever.

Yawn.

Women are going to have to come to terms with the terrifying fact that men are growing beyond their ability to control. We will be exploited and chained no longer – there is nothing positive in slavery to a woman, and endless suffering. One by one, men are waking up and moving on to places where women cannot follow.

If you see a carefree man skipping off into the forest one day, well, that’s not Bigfoot. It is me.