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My wife certainly would not fit your criteria and we have been happily together for almost 15 years, married for a substantial portion of that, and have a bunch of kids.
My wife started significantly more liberal than me, but is now radically more conservative than I am, she was vehemently anti-religion, and is now an extremely devout Catholic who prays the rosary multiple times a day, wants endless deep conversations about religious philosophy, and would happily go to church with me every day if we could handle it with the number of kids we have.
I'm going to be blunt: a lot of the men I talk to about dating are just weak losers. Stop being a weak loser. Women want a man who is going to take care of them, and in a sense "tame" them. Look at every single female erotica story and it's some version of "strong willed man tames crazy rebellious woman" (often wrapped in: strong man sees the thing in rebellious woman that nobody else saw and they tame each other, but she still wants him to remain strong and only tamed towards her).
I see a lot of men who whine and complain that they don't want a "project", or a woman that isn't already the perfect match for them. Well...okay, man, but the entire world is made mostly by men who like the idea of a "project" in basically every facet of their entire lives, so maybe your status as single is a feature of evolution.
The only thing I agree with on your criteria is: STDs/sex work. That is a dealbreaker.
Yes, I didn't include the political affiliation criteria because that's one of the most malleable traits for women.
On the other hand, a full on seventy motherflipping percent of unmarried women vote democrat.
40% of women aged 18-29 identify as VERY LIBERAL or Liberal.
Have you not heard about the recent, RADICAL political polarization among young women?
These women ALSO largely refuse to date conservative/Republican men.
So men don't HAVE to filter these women out, these women are filtering THEMSELVES out. And they go on social media and aggressively police other women on this issue.
Whoops.
(btw this wasn't the case 15 years ago when you got married, so I humbly suggest your advice is based on a qualitatively different scenario)
Its all well and good to say "it worked out for me."
But the situation has gotten drastically worse. Not acknowledging this is a huge oversight.
And here it is.
"Men, be better."
Okay.
But now the best men get to sleep around with their pick of women and never have to commit.
The rest of the men have to compete for a smaller pool of women, because you can't even suggest that maybe we should make the pool of good women larger.
The relationships are not forming at all.
AT WHAT POINT do you start suggesting that we put pressure on women to lower their standards a bit and settle down earlier?
Why is it so impossible to be better? And why don't you simply date lower status women, and then elevate their status?
Because the odds are much higher that they divorce you and take your wealth and lower YOUR status.
Downside risk is serious, upside benefits are usually small.
McKenzie Bezos and Melinda Gates became billionaires... by divorcing billionaires.
What man would want that particular risk AFTER he went to the trouble of accumulating the wealth in order to be able to get the woman in the first place.
A woman would have to be worth that risk.
The absurdity of the situation is that men are told to accumulate more skills, wealth, and VALUE, for women who are less valuable and more likely to defect from the marriage, and thus to take much of the value the man worked so hard to acquire.
And literally EVERY SINGLE LEGAL CHANGE IN THE PAST 50+ YEARS HAS FAVORED WOMEN'S ABILITY TO DEFECT.
Why is it so impossible to suggest that women should settle earlier?
The stats are showing that:
Conclusion: MEN SHOULD IMPROVE THEMSELVES.
Hilarious.
It ain't working. the women ain't happy, the men are lonely, when do we admit that current advice is insufficient?
Oh for hell's sake. McKenzie Bezos helped Jeff when he was establishing Amazon and she was in the steady job earning the money while he chased his dream. Then the marriage ended because HE, not she, fell for the next door slapper* and blew up his marriage (apparently they are finally getting married because she just threw a huge hen party recently).
I think in that case she's entitled to every penny of the divorce settlement. I'm not familiar with Melinda Gates' case but again that seems to be Bill not being able to keep it in his pants. The men in these examples are the cheating liars, not the women. Pick a different scare story than "oh no, if you wreck your marriage to the woman who raised your kids and was there in the early years before you became rich and famous because you chased a blow-up Barbie doll, you might even have to pay a fair share of alimony! clearly women are all only gold diggers!".
*This is what she considered appropriate to wear to a presidential inauguration. But go ahead, tell me how poor Jeff was taken advantage of by his rapacious wife.
I don’t see why a woman should have any right to a man’s earnings after termination of the marriage. Being a good companion and a good parent is easy. Making money is hard. If one parent stayed at home while the other worked, if there’s a divorce, the idle parent should owe compensation for the time they twiddled their thumbs and watched teletubbies on the other’s dime: they’ve had their fun, it’s their turn to work now.
I smell a stuffy prudishness in your condemnation these men: are you familiar with the modern concept of no-fault divorce? No one gives a shit who fucked who, and even less how the paramour dressed.
In the case of McKenzie Bezos, she was functionally his business partner at the founding of Amazon and it simply hadn't been structured that way because they were married. This seems like a reasonable thing for the courts to decide in the event of divorce.
More to your point, being a good wife and mother is not, actually, easy. It isn't a super g-loaded task but housewives should be recognized for their valuable role and marital property in the event of a divorce seems fair. Neither Gates nor Bezos are poor after their divorces(which, again, were easily avoidable by those men).
She put a few stamps on early orders, that must entitle her to half the future earnings of the man who created and worked all his life as CEO of that company. I think not.
We live in a time where every wife feels like an “equal-value partner” in their husband’s business, and the laws we made agree with them. But they are not.
I understand it's always the man's fault and he always has to pay. If he cheats, well he got what he deserved. If she cheats, he failed to nurture a woman's love, he didn't treat her right, and you wouldn't want to slut shame a woman anyway, and besides, she 'contributed' to the marriage, so here's the bill again.
At every level of society, at every age, women get more than they put in. Starting at university, where they have been 56/44 for decades despite working far less, through marriage, divorce, and pensions, where they live longer after having contributed less. And the more we hand over to them, the more oppressed they feel.
It is not ‘always the man’s fault’ to believe that, in these two specific cases, it’s the fault of the man. Indeed, the rule of thumb most people would use to blame Jeff and Bill is that adultery is a major fault committed by the party who engages in it.
Life isn’t entirely fair, but ‘Jeff Bezos having to pay out to his early business partner because he couldn’t keep his pants on’ is not a great example. We live in a world where early google employees got it made even if they were cooks, ‘successful startups give huge payouts to early employees, even if they’re not worth it’ is just how our society works, and this is a delayed example because marriage necessarily changes property arrangements.
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