It happened suddenly.
I worked closely with a certain guy for a couple years. We were on the same team in a job with some customer service orientation. He was phenomenally good at dealing with the clients. He’s a problem-solver; he loves to help people. He is gentle, progressive and generous to a fault. He was living with his long term girlfriend. Eventually they got married. I went to their wedding. Then I didn’t see him for a while…
Next thing I knew, less than a year later I ran into him in Jerusalem. We chilled there for a couple hours with various other friends and friends of friends. I asked him how his wife was doing. He told me quietly that they’d separated and were in the process of getting divorced. I could see the pain in his eyes and I heard it in his voice. He loved her completely and sincerely. She dumped his ass as soon as she qualified for a Green Card based on his US citizenship.
There was another guy who worked with us. He was on a different team, but I got to know him pretty well because we went to university together and had friends in common there. This guy was so nice, he’d go way out of his way to do someone a favor. He was a vegan and a pacifist, and religious too. He and his girlfriend had a rocky, passionate relationship. Eventually they got married. I went to their wedding. Then I didn’t see him for a while…
Next thing I knew, I was hanging out with a mutual friend and found out that the marriage was over and that between them, the only thing on which they could agree was the time to meet at the Rabbinical court to get the divorce formalized. The poor guy was so depressed, he’d holed himself up in an apartment and had stopped answering his phone. He couldn’t face the world without his wife, the love of his life. He started learning very seriously in a yeshiva, while she went out and partied.
I knew a buddy of mine for a really long time. He was actually partly responsible for getting me turned onto Israel back when I was in high school – so I owe him a major debt and always remind him when I see him how influential he’s been in my life. Truth is, he’s a little weird. We lived together for a little over a year in Jerusalem. He is quiet, the most polite person I know, never raised his voice to another person, extremely frugal and simple, down to earth and a wonderful human being. After I moved out to Tel Aviv, he started seeing a girl 10 years younger. They’re religious, so they didn’t wait a long time and eventually they got married. I went to their wedding. Then I didn’t see him for a while…
Next thing I knew, his young bride was not only divorcing him, but she was cruelly and coldly using his weirdness against him in the most inhuman ways: by making him out to be an unfit father, by throwing around accusations that he’s not fully together mentally. This poor guy would give the shirt off his back to a drunk, muttering bum on the street. He volunteers in soup kitchens and doesn’t tell anybody. He loves his baby daughter (and until now loved his wife) more than life itself. Now it’s all been torn away from him. I’m not sure he’ll make it.
Not long ago at all, I looked around and observed that most of my friends were getting married. I wanted what they had: stable homes with (usually) loving wives and beautiful children; a future. What happened? Why are terrible things happening to my sweetest, gentlest guy friends?
What’s happening is that these nice guys are getting mugged by the reality of 21st century marriage, which is similar in form but not at all in substance to marriage in previous eras. They all are nice by nature and were led to believe that niceness would be enough to ensure long-term contentment and happiness. They were wrong, dead wrong. Niceness worked for my grandfathers, but by the time my parents married in the late 1970s (they are still together and they deserve a lot of credit for it, since my dad is not an easy guy to get along with) it was irrelevant. And by now, niceness is about the worst quality a man can have if he wants exactly what my grandfathers, my father, I and my friends all want and have wanted: stable homes, loving wives, beautiful children; a future.
I’ve been in two relationships that could have led to marriage. Neither of them did, and I mourned my loss when each one ended. But today I’m happy and relieved that I never asked a girl to marry me. Sure, there’s a chance that it all would have worked out, and we’d have lived happily ever after, but the odds are so stacked against me that, in retrospect, it’s daunting and I’m grateful.
Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about the great trick of Nature, that fickle whore: how the desirability of girls is extremely high around age 20, but tends to decline after their mid 20s, and to accelerate in decline after 30, to reach the extreme low of a wrinkled, middle aged shrew – while the desirability of boys starts so low but tends slowly and steadily to improve over the years to reach the extreme high of whatever it is that girls find irresistible in middle aged men – give me time; I’m still in my late 20s – and how precisely this age-moment is the most fascinating time to be active and involved in dating.
It’s right now that girls of my cohort are becoming no longer as desirable as I am. They don’t realize it yet, though, which is why it’s still a challenge for me to hook up with girls near my own age. But girls a few years older – they’ve passed age 30 – all know it and are eager to give me their time and attention. And girls a few years younger, even the very cute ones – before they start their decline – see me as a catch while completely oblivious to the perfectly good guys their own age.
If all of this had played out differently – if a girl in her mid 20s a few years ago had realized what a nice guy I was, I could have been married before having an opportunity to play the field, and then I might now be experiencing the hellish nightmare.
If you’re a man and you’re reading this, I’m not going to tell you not to get married – some marriages do work, especially when the couple shares some external value system like religion that can guide them and that provides a community to be taken away from the wife if she acts like a monster. But I am going to say that my decision, notwithstanding my earnest desire for a wholesome, happy, normal life with children, is that such a thing is highly unlikely ever to happen and I will not pursue marriage in any way.
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