While marriage almost always leaves much to be desired, sometimes it can be borne of careful repurposing of disposed of feelings. Sometimes experiences become guiding lights. Sometimes another person’s love affair becomes a cautionary tale. It’s all okay. When we grow up, most things don’t fit. Age-old ideas of integrity and wholesomeness don’t fit either. When that happens it is okay to try new things and new ideas. Sometimes, because we have changed in size and capacity so much, they fit better.
I used to think that if I married a good guy my life would be relatively carefree and might even turn out to be wonderful. Time proved that wrong. Under capitalism, good people barely make any dent in the constant rigmarole of mundane activities that we need to engage in to have some semblance of normal and livable.
Age brings so many epiphanies. Age also can bring some transition of ideas from fantastical to practical, hence this blog.
In my opinion, women should marry twice. At the least! If marriage is your thing then the first order of that disappointing business is to not pursue the happily ever after. The first order is to chase bigger, better, nicer, grander, taller, darker, more handsome and of course richer. Just like men do!
The two phases of a woman’s life where she is deemed desirable are arguably her twenties and then her forties. No one pays attention to us in our thirties. We are wound tight, chasing kids’ lunch menus, trying to please in-laws, catering to the proverbial lord, juggling a career with it all. We also have a newfound distaste for men after having chased an idea of cohabitation with them for years. So the thirties are usually a lost cause. When you’ve chased men as a form of deliverance and finally get them, you realize that what you were searching for was definitely not a man.
So here’s my proposed plan for women who want some blueprint for a relatively less stressful life.
When you’re in your twenties maybe marry for things that are available in your dating pool. Looks, chivalry, men who still have the eagerness to please women, men who are slightly more honest than their older counterparts.
This search won’t be futile for the most part because being jaded is a work of life and experience. In our twenties we can find less jaded men who haven’t been fed tales of fictional women who betrayed their fathers. They want to see a woman for who she is, not what the patriarchy has painted her to be. The charlatans that their fathers warn them of, these young men are attracted to. This is a good time to experience the goodness in men.
But this phenomenon of goodness, kindness, wholesomeness that usually continues to take stronger roots in a woman as she gets older, somehow dwindles with time in men. They become more careless, withdrawn, detached, uncaring and even, indifferent. That’s when women should know they’re done. That’s when you are in your forties. The kids have grown a little, you have time to look for the light at the end of this tunnel, you can turn to things that inspired you once and led you into this life in the first place. Family, bonds, commitment, love, the idea of growing together with a man who laughs and banters with us! All that is what’s marriage is made out to be. Rarely it’s all of those things.
But many women realize that there’s no light at the end of this tunnel. This tunnel didn’t form of its own accord. A man built it. A man, so secure in his ideas of constructing the right prison for a woman, constructed our biggest social prison, marriage. Then it all comes together. Then it all makes sense.
So the second search should start from here. But not with the same ideals, in my opinion. The second search should be to defeat capitalism with its biggest foot soldier, a man with money.
Women who look for men with money are called many names in this filthy society that waits for any opportunity for a woman to deviate from her role as outlined by it.
Marrying rich when we are older comes with many benefits. First of all, the way it’s all laid out for older women, our dating matches are men in their sixties. Yup! Women in their forties aren’t being sought by men in their twenties, thirties, forties, or even fifties. Dating apps match us with men in their sixties. Don’t come for me! If it were up to me I’d remove the idea of age from human health sciences. It serves no one.
These men in their sixties can pick up a tab, something that many nice guys don’t do for us in our twenties. Liberal feminism did us a disservice when it explained our problems to be coming from lack of money. When we have money, we have other problems, like picking up the check after dinner and dropping them off in our car, paying their phone bill, buying them clothes.
It’s crass and mostly just a commentary on my observations and not really advice worthy advice but why men can’t be nice when rich and why they are not rich when nice is not as big a conundrum as some people make it out to be. Men know how to capitalize the bare minimum. They have never been shown scarcity so they live in abundance. When they’re nice we are expected to take it as a rare value that we would be stupid to decline. So we take it with gratitude and even with some wonderment at how it happened! With time they become indistinguishable from the nice guy we met years ago. Don’t accept this change as just time and age and the natural phases of the moon. Get out and look for a better man! And while you’re at it, find a rich one.
My mind as a woman 