Many in the Manosphere believe the State has no place in marriage, no marriage license or other gov’t certification, just “you, me and God”. But speaking for myself, I would not get married unless the State IS involved in marriage… because it should be.
Any partnership of two cannot be a partnership of equals. One or the other must be in charge, to solve the inevitable 1-1 voting ties. God has declared that the man is to be in charge and the nonreligious-yet-sane are generally on board with that.
But here’s the thing, God is not going to show up and assert the husband’s authority.
Similarly, the couple can go off in the woods and make a private marriage contract or covenant, just the two of them. Great. But when breach is committed, who enforces the terms? If wifey cleans out the bank account, grabs the kids and moves to Papua New Guinea for the Eat, Pray, Love lifestyle, what can the man do to stop her? The contract/covenant is just a piece of paper. Not an avenging angel.
It is the God-given duty of the State to punish evil. Therefore, it is the God-given duty of the State, its natural function, to enforce the terms of marriage. Specifically, the husband’s authority.
Boxer, Derek and a few others have been trying to cheerlead for marriage recently, which prompted this post. It’s all tone-deaf noise to me. I do not care how good marriage MIGHT be. I do not care how well it CAN make me happy. Too many men exactly like me have been utterly ruined.
I want a guarantee that a wife would respect and obey me. Already, I know from experience that I’m not attractive to women. That can’t be compensated for with vetting and upping my Charisma statistic.
A guarantee is unreasonable in terms of realistic expectations but entirely reasonable for a man who’s spent his entire adult life watching family life burn because of everything from dead-bed marriages to the utter ruin of men exactly like me. I do not dare to live in a world of hopes and maybes.
Only a government can offer a guarantee of enforcing the husband’s authority over his wife. In the past, “government” meant local politicians and priests, which I assume is what the men who “want government out of marriage” actually want. You want a marriage with no human authorities involved at all? Then just start porking her and find out the hard way if she stays loyal for the rest of her life.
More than my personal demands, I believe the inability of modern husbands to threatpoint their wives is exactly why they are considered unsexy. Women respond to fear, not opportunity, and we’ve learned from the Red Pill that women even take a measure of comfort in the occasional spanking, smackdown or general frame-grab. The only two ways we can regain husbandly threatpoint is the State empowering fathers or the State turning a blind eye to domestic violence. Both are decisions the State must make, so this is a decision for the State to make.
Yes, the State today has weaponized marriage against the innocent. The State has weaponized everything against the innocent. My taxes keep going up and being used to fund outrageous perversions. Property ownership is encumbered to the point of “the working homeless” becoming a common term. That doesn’t mean that all State oversight of the institution of marriage is inappropriate, it means that our current crop of parasites and cultural arsonists need their necks stretched.
Yeah, I don’t react well to treachery. A major reason I can’t risk marriage.
I close with an example of what a healthy marital threatpoint might look like. Once per week, a husband can have the police put his wife in the stockade for a day. No questions asked, just drop her off in the morning. (Or call for a pickup if she won’t go quietly.) She spends a day in discomfort and public humiliation, but no actual cruelty, under the watch of a dispassionate jailer rather than a potentially enraged hubby.
Wives would respect their husbands more if they knew he could make that call and they’d have no recourse. Not unlike what’s happening now, actually, which suggests threatpoints are a primal way of how women think. Men don’t like the idea of using leverage against their wives, being more likely to attempt reason, outwait the problem or thug out upon her. Which is why the State should provide a threatpoint like this one as a marital convenience, to promote happy and healthy marriages among its constituents.
I don’t think that constitutes a marriage because there needs to at least be some witnesses…be it the church, state, family, or randos.
I would agree, except for the fact that reality weaponizes marriage against men. Until government can become just, men have to operate outside of the system (by owning separate bank accounts, setting up trusts, not obtaining marriage licenses, etc)
The entire point of witnesses was so that there would be communal enforcement and shaming, neither of which occur now
“The entire point of witnesses was so that there would be communal enforcement and shaming, neither of which occur now”
Neither of which CAN occur now. The population is so mobile that witnesses can’t reasonably enforce vows like they used to. I have a cousin getting married in Colorado later this year. If attending the ceremony meant I might be honor-bound to track down his ex-wife and kidnap his kids back, I simply wouldn’t go.
I’m worried for the guy, probably will buy him Rollo’s book, but her physiognomy isn’t red-flagged and we aren’t close enough for me to advise him anyway.