I used to think that men who got married were idiots.
Or, if they weren’t idiots, they were at least undesirable enough that they just had to settle for whoever chose them … because why else would you tie yourself to someone for life if the reason weren’t that you didn’t have any other romantic options?
I mean, seriously… getting married??
Okay so… you get a couple of months of hot sex, in exchange for a lifetime of indentured servitude to someone who eventually takes you for granted and sees you as a walking wallet and then stops having sex with you and makes jokes with her friends about what a dumbass you are?
And that’s if you even manage to stay together … because what’s even more likely is that she eventually leaves you, takes the kids, and steals half of your life savings in the process.
Who in their right mind would sign up for such a thing?
Didn’t these guys realise that, if you really break down the benefits of marriage into their fundamental components, you could hire out all of these needs for way less money than what your lifestyle of snotty-nosed kids and inevitable divorce would cost you?
And I’m not speaking hyperbolically here!
Here, I’ll prove it to you…
You could hire someone to come to your house to do a deep clean every other week, depending on the size of your house, let’s say $200/month.
You don’t want to cook for yourself? Okay, you could hire a meal prepping service who could make your lunches and dinners (you can fend for yourself with a super simple breakfast) for $2,000/month.
Okay, cooking and cleaning are taken care of for less than the cost of your mortgage payment… what’s left? Oh right, the big one. Sex!
Depending on how fancy you are and the legality of sex work in your local area, you could see a sex worker every week for the rest of your life and spend no more than $1-2,000 per month on that expense.
So if you tally up the monthly costs of outsourcing predictable, guaranteed, high-quality cooking, cleaning, and sex… you’re looking at no more than $50,000 per year in total expenses.
Now, that might sound like a lot to some in the short term … but if you compare that to the average cost of raising children, and the amount of money you’ll inevitably have to shell out in your divorce, this is an absolute bargain.
With this new and improved, upgraded lifestyle:
– You get to keep your heart protected in a steel cage…
– You never have to clean your own toilets (ever again!)…
– And you get to ejaculate in/on/around a swinging door of new strangers on a weekly basis.
Again, it’s an absolute steal. Who wouldn’t sign up for that?
I mean, what’s the alternative? Mainstream monogamy? YUCK!
Tethering yourself to someone for life who will see your blindspots, challenge you to become a better version of yourself while pouring their love all over you and giving you deeply nourishing sex from a place of joy, desire, and emotional overflow?
Handcuffing yourself to someone who encourages your deepest dreams, holds you through your tears when life hands you hardships, and whose generous, pure love can make you tear up just by making eye contact across the breakfast table?
What a nightmare.
Or… wait…
Maybe… the real nightmare would be seeing love as a perpetual threat…
Keeping life at a safe distance and dying having never truly let anyone in…
And living with your heart in a thick casing of armour because of the accurate assumption that marrying someone you loved would be a significant spiritual death for your ego.
Because any relationship founded on control, fear, criticism, and mistrust is doomed to failure.
In order for any relationship to thrive, we do have to set down the protection mechanisms that once served a purpose, but no longer do.
Come to think of it… there is no greater growth tool available to us than to bind ourselves to another, and allow all of our stuff to come up, and fall away, piece by piece.
Today, I am in a relationship so deeply nourishing it would make my 10-year-ago-self’s head spin.
I don’t fight or resist the feminine. I am able to allow myself to be nourished all the way to the core of my being.
I’m sure that if my younger self saw me today, he would laugh, or internally diminish or judge what he saw (secretly envying it at a deep level). But in truth, I’ve never been happier or more holistically fulfilled.
I am softer than my militaristic 20-something-year-old me. I own soft blankets, and I allow myself to lay my head on my lover’s chest — something former me wasn’t able to allow himself.
So if you’re someone who thinks that marriage is for idiots … or you have a fear of truly allowing yourself to be relationally vulnerable with someone, let me be the first to tell you, directly, that it is so worth it.
Love is what we are here for, and nothing will help you grow and deepen more rapidly than a safe, kind, love relationship.
So, anyway, this piece has gone on long enough, and I have to get going.
I have an appointment to go look at engagement rings.
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This article was originally published at Jordan Gray Consulting. Reprinted with permission from the author.