"75% of women wouldn't marry someone who was unemployed..."
So Glenn linked to this story about how 75% of women will not marry an unemployed man. "That sounds interesting," I thought and headed over to read it. Here is the gist of it:
At first, I was a little put off by the results thinking that the women didn't value men except as a "walking wallet" but since 65% of them didn't want to marry if they themselves were unemployed, it doesn't seem to be too bad. Perhaps the women feel that both spouses should be in a more stable place. What do you think? Would you marry someone if they were unemployed?
According to a recent YourTango and ForbesWoman survey, 75% of women wouldn't marry someone who was unemployed, and 65% wouldn't tie the knot if they themselves were jobless. Ironically, 91 percent of single women say they would marry for love over money.
"It is ironic that women place more weight on love than money, yet won't marry if they or their potential suitor is unemployed," said Meghan Casserly, Reporter, ForbesWoman. "A job can make or break the longevity of a relationship and the results of the survey demonstrate just what an important role careers play in romance."
At first, I was a little put off by the results thinking that the women didn't value men except as a "walking wallet" but since 65% of them didn't want to marry if they themselves were unemployed, it doesn't seem to be too bad. Perhaps the women feel that both spouses should be in a more stable place. What do you think? Would you marry someone if they were unemployed?
Labels: marriage
posted by Helen at 7:17 PM
26 Comments:
No. My first question would be, how much debt are you carrying? Because I'm not about to assume it.
I'm also not about to assume presumptive patertinty.
Who cares what the modern American Girl thinks or feels? I don't.
Marriage is out of the question. She doesn't like it? Fine, then change the law. Otherwise, buy your own house, where you can sit at home alone and complain about men.
First, I remember that Most Published Research Findings Are False and how can it get better with random stuff reported from YourTango?
But I will note what I perceive as a big difference between a) "75% of women wouldn't marry someone who was unemployed", and b) "65% wouldn't tie the knot if they themselves were jobless"
That has to do with the questions:
1) Would you start dating a man who you discovered was unemployed?
2) Would you start dating a man who if you were unemployed?
I suspect, but I don't know, that your prospective date not having a job IS an immediate dealbreaker for many people, but not so much for when it is YOU who are unemployed.
And given that, I can see an unemployed woman, saying ahead of time for a survey they wouldn't tie the knot if they were unemployed, and yet doing so anyway, if the opportunity presented itself.
I think I muddled this up quite a bit.
"It is ironic that women place more weight on love than money...
I don't believe them. Every time I've known a woman who had to choose between two men, the one she loved most and the one with the most money, money won.
75%?
Interesting. That's basically the rate at which women file divorce papers.
Might I then rightly assume that if 75% of women won't marry me if I'm jobless, then those same harpies would gleefully divorce me when I'm laid off and her sister takes my job via affirmative action?
Apparently, she thinks I'm just a wallet with a sperm problem.
Let her marry a gay man. They're the only men today who are silly enough to desire marriage.
A woman without a job would be the most desirable, assuming she is still young and hasn't racked up a large amount of debt or been playing men up for support. The only reason to get married is to have children, otherwise there isn't much point, so choosing a woman who is actively anti-career is ideal
In the age of alimony? Hell no.
Speaking for Bitter and I, we've held off on marriage because I have had a very unstable job situation and she's been unemployed, now long term. She was young and at the beginning of her career when she lost her job, and then the Hope and Change hit hard.
My job situation is no longer unstable, fortunately. Obama's promised change has come to our household, as the biotech I joined at the ground floor and stayed with for ten years just shut its doors last week, so I am now unemployed, and the hope has come too in the form of me hoping for a good new opportunity to come along soon.
I can understand not wanting to get married during uncertain economic times. It's possible to do a cheap wedding, but there's something instinctive, I think, in the human character that wants to put off big life decisions in the face of uncertainty. I've thought "I don't want to get married until she finds a job," and that is not because I don't love her, but because her having a job brings extra security into the arrangement. We both would like a wedding where we don't have to leave out people who are important to us, and even going to cheap route, it's still the cost of a decent used car.
Being unemployed is a character flaw like drug and alcohol abuse, ignorance and violence. You would have to be a whack-job yourself to marry anyone with those flaws.
Life and marriage are too serious for this nonsense.
I don't find these statistics all that surprising, nor do I consider them to be particularly mercenary on the part of women. Speaking as the father of a daughter who will soon be of marriageable age, I would certainly have something to say if she wanted to marry a young man who did not have good prospects or a steady income. I would call that a poor choice on her part. There is a practical side to starting a life together that cannot be ignored.
if you are to marry, then it makes perfect sense to bring assets to the table, but if you merely find yourself attracted to a person, their financial status shouldn`t matter so much...especially if you are 40+, yet women keep acting like they are 22 and needing a nest.
instinct.
and my daughter really should check in with the gay boy with the parents who have a helicopter, rather than bust her current boyfriends balls because he is only a security guard....
What about asking men if they'd marry a woman who was unemployed? The fact that this didn't occur to the researchers speaks volumes.
@ZorroPrimo -- You hit it over the fence once again. It's becoming clear through a number of items that Helen posts American women basically just want a gay best friend who will give them lots of money. Then when they want sex, they can cheat with a lumberjack (or insert other manly occupation here) and come home to the gay man for more money.
Gay marriage is probably a good idea, given that a prerequisite to being happily married is that one should enjoy being relentlessly pounded in the ass.
"What about asking men if they'd marry a woman who was unemployed?"
--
I assume that most men would. I've also seen women just unilaterally quit work - with no advance notice - shortly after the wedding.
I've even seen some men who don't seem to mind paying alimony, no matter how lazy she is.
I don't understand it, but I guess I don't have to. I wouldn't touch some lazy sit-at-home with an eleven-foot barge pole, so all you Real Men can have at it.
So much for equality. If women aren't going to step up to the plate, perhaps they ought to go back to the bleachers. By the way, when is equality supposed to kick in? After 40 to 60 years of unfair unconstitutionally imposed super-equality, based on sex and skin color, when is the government going to be forced to cease and desist? Meh, people have gotten used to being abused. Expect it to only worsen. We have become a people of the state, no longer we the people.
Oh-oh? Is that illegal to say? All of it?
Ironically, 91 percent of single women say they would marry for love over money.
Dadvocate's comment got me thinking about a truism: if they say it isn't about the money, it most certainly is about the money.
There's a big difference between dating for fun and husband/wife hunting; I don't understand why 100% of you are unaware of that. There are men you wed and men you bed.
Every woman's taste in men she chooses for pleasure is a little different. For me: artists, musicians, writers and philosophers; silver-tongued scoundrels, men who play games, men who play war; men who are mad, bad and dangerous to know; men I love brightly and lightly.
But what a woman wants in a husband is always the same. Well, perhaps not what she *thinks* she wants, but the way a woman must see a man (and I base this solely on observation) in order to love him "until death" is always the same. And it's astronomically improbable that all of you are wedding material. There isn't a girl for every boy and not everybody is ready to inspire "until death" love when he gets his girl. That's why she leaves.
I think the solution is already on the table. Many people are choosing not get married. It takes the pressure off. If you don't have job, if you don't have a stable job, if you don't have money in the bank, if you don't own a house, then you are off the hook. Fewer and fewer people are able to live up to society's prequalifiers for marriage.
All of these comments remind me of a movie called Cherry 2000. I think infidelity and divorce are a constant norm throughout history. Always will be.
A guy at work just married his son to a stunning woman through an arranged marriage. Perhaps arranged marriages are a way to address the socio-financial issues discussed in this post. I recall there are a people in Eastern Africa that marry a 20 year old woman to a 35 year old man. It is how they do it. The man gets 15 years to get his business together. Then again, there are women in Western Afghanistan who set themselves on fire rather than live with their in-laws.
Science is about to give us the option of having children asexually. Tequila will continue to keep the gene pool stirring.
Golddigger,
Women who use love and lovers as play toys need not apply, they are not worth marriage save to men who need token wives or something, and then only if they have kept up, and usually to older (monied) men. But, understand, that is a designer thing for looks, politics (of various sorts), and social standing. There is no relationship... it's just business. But, go, play. Good luck catching a real man when you finish.
Not marrying someone because they are *temporarily* unemployed is analogous to not buying a stock because the company missed its quarterly earnings target. One needs to look at the longer-term trends.
Prior to the development of reliable contraception, marriage usually meant children in short order, and in those days a more-or-less guaranteed source of income was more essential. Memes often survive the reasons they originated.
I do think Sebastian is correct that general instability/uncertainty tends to inhibit the making of important decisions of just about all types.
That all sounds very dire, Doom. But you mistake me. Lovers aren't playthings, they're playmates: co-conspirators, fellow adventurers. Relationships like that are intoxicating precisely *because* everybody understands they're not intended to last. There's none of this endlessly going to endless dinners to talk endlessly. You go all in every moment because you know you'll never get that moment back. That's why the lovers' euphoria you feel is so unusually heated and intense. And that dynamic would be more difficult to create and maintain with someone who wasn't in on the game and down with the rules, at least at the beginning. It's not about using people as dupes or toys. That would be horrible.
But if it makes you feel better, I don't mess around with damaged men. I conduct a very thorough baggage screening to check for that. It's a matter of self-preservation, true, but I'd do it even if it weren't. If I had my way, love would never be painful.
Damaged men? Who do you think damaged him? Most likely it was some woman who abandoned, betrayed and bankrupted him. And so now having sex with you is, what, special?
Sex is sex. There's nothing special about it, and there is no love involved.
I find this entire discussion sad. All these girls saying they want to sleep around like guys, in some desperate search for equality.
Actually, most guys are loyal to their girlfriends or wives. Much moreso than girls are loyal to their boyfriends or husbands. She has the law on her side. There's this pesky little thing in the marriage contract, you know, presumptive paternity.
The modern American girl is worthless. Now they're having slut walks, as if out of pride.
Fuck her and dump her. She isn't worth 50%. She certainly isn't deserving of presumptive patertinty.
Take her out for dinner, maybe buy her a couple of drinks, and after she has sex with you, leave.
This is what the modern American girl has been reduced to, one quick fuck.
I'd rather have the money.
i think damaged men and damaged women find eachother for all the reasons we write about here.
healthy women don`t steal what`s not their`s, and healthy men learn to realise that, if they`ve had bad experiences, adjust their sail.
not all women are bandits...but it would appear that at least 75% are, and will blithely tell you as such over drinks ON THE FIRST DATE.
the statements they make arrive in the form of how they lynched their ex. all you have to do is ask, and they will take on that conspiratorial tone and almost whisper each sordid detail about why the man deserved to get fleeced, because they needed a reason...otherwise the guilt would be too too much.
i`ve sat in the seat across from a few smiling little predators as a single guy dating again and thankfully, i knew the questions to ask and the answers of my own to provide, to get the lower set of teeth showing, and the bile to start rising.
one girl told me she was going after her ex for 10 years of back support for her son, worth about $150,000 and that i should watch out for him because her was violent....shame. she was nice to look at, but the anger...wow.
and before anyone thinks i`m saying that these are my ideas, realise that i learned these things from pua lectures, nlp training and so on. all learnable skills.
as men, we have to defend ourselves from those who would take our assets, otherwise we are no better than any other perpetual victim, crying that all women are this, that and the other thing and any bloke who would be in a relationship and/or married is a sucker.
..and sometimes the real girl doesn`t emerge for a few dates...or even a few weeks, and i`ve experienced that too, and you have to be able to be honest with yourself when it happens and put her on a long leash...or break it off.
As a father of a daughter I would feel a bit hesitant if she wanted to marry an unemployed man - so I have to back the women on this one.
It is a stupid idea to marry when unemployed unless you are already living together and the wedding cost no money.
Love doesn't pay the bills or put food on the table (and babies are expensive.)
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