Should a man get married young or should he wait? It’s a question that concerns me because I have one son and another one on the way. Marrying well plays a key role in a person’s overall happiness so I want to be sure to give them good advice.
For women, I think there is one clear answer: Get married young. A girl reaches her peak attractiveness when she is in her early twenties. This coincides with her peak fertility. Because of this, a girl in her early twenties is at her peak sexual market value. She will be able to attract the highest value mate.
For men, the question is more complicated. There are advantages to either approach, but overall, there are more benefits to getting married young.
1. More sex
#BringBackThePatriarchy because time is short. Love. Get married. Have babies. Grow old cultivating life. pic.twitter.com/20UJcGkjPL
— John Random (@JohnRandom1234) October 26, 2015
Getting married early means that you will have more sex. Yes, it limits the number of different women that you will have sex with, but you will have more sex with your wife than you would have than if you were single.
It seems counter-intuitive. We are conditioned to think that married people have sex rarely. Yet, study after study has shown that married people have more sex than single people. There is a simple reason for this—sheer convenience. Even the most skilled pick-up artist has to get dressed up, head to his target location, and proposition lots of girls to find one that he can take home. Even then he is not assured that he will attain his goal.
Meanwhile, if you are married, you have your cute wife laying in bed right next to you every night. She has already said “yes” to you so you are not starting seduction from zero every time.
The trade-off is between variety and quantity. If you marry well, you will have an edge in quality as well. Quantity and quality are always important but they are especially important for younger men as their libidos are at their peak.
If you happen to be Christian, there is a practical aspect to getting married young. Christians are not supposed to engage in premarital sex or masturbation. The only moral option is a temporary celibacy until you find your future wife. This is not easy, but it is doable. Still, most guys are going to struggle so they end up leading a life with some dissonance. Getting married will fix the dissonance.
2. Children
When I was single, I never thought about children as a benefit to being married. I was completely indoctrinated into thinking that children are a burden that gets in the way of enjoying abundant sex. I was wrong.
Since I had my son, I’ve completely changed my thinking. I immediately realized that the reason I am on this earth is not to create some business, to work in a cubicle, or to get criminals off with the minimum sentence. My mission in life is to be a husband and a father. Everything else is just a means to that end.
As men, our entire nature is oriented toward being fathers. If you are called to the priesthood, you are still called to be a father—it is just that it is a spiritual paternity. It is natural for men to want to leave a legacy, but modern culture programs us to believe that our only legacy is to have as much fun as possible. The emptiness of this message was driven home to me by the death of fitness model Greg Plitt in January 2015.
Plitt was an ex-Army Ranger turned successful fitness model. If you’ve ever glanced at the cover of a magazine like Men’s Fitness or Muscle & Fitness, I guarantee that you have seen his photo. He was only 37 years old when he died in an accident.
I read an obituary for Plitt that was written by one of his friends. As you can imagine, a tall, handsome, fit guy like Plitt had no problem with the ladies. The obit implied that he had lots of girlfriends. But the saddest thing about his death is that he left his healthy fortune to his parents—Plitt was not married and he did not have any children. Although he touched many lives, he wasn’t able to leave the kind of legacy that a traditional man wants to leave.
But none of us know how much time we have. If we delay getting married and having children, we run the risk of not having a legacy.
3. Stability & Professional Success
No matter how hard our society has tried, it has not succeeded in making being a bachelor equivalent to being married when it comes to professional success. If you are married, you are more likely to be admitted to polite society. Because a single man is a wild card, he is less likely to be asked to outside functions that might serve to advance his career.
Being married also tends to a more stable life. Inevitably people who “love going out” during the week while they are single suddenly become “busy” once they are married. The truth is that they are probably just busy lounging around together because they never enjoyed going out in the first place. This settled, orderly life is conducive to professional success and wealth accumulation.
Mitt Romney is a great example of someone who used his stable marriage as a launching pad to success in several areas. Romney got married and had his first son while he was an undergraduate at BYU. After that, he finished a joint JD/MBA at Harvard Law and Harvard Business. Later, he was able to start a successful business, save the 2002 Winter Olympics from failure, serve as governor of Massachusetts, and run for President. Romney was born into wealth, but even so, his accomplishments are impressive.
One drawback
There is one drawback to getting married younger—you will reach a point where you have a higher market value than your wife. Let’s say that you marry your college sweetheart when you are both 22. At the time of your marriage, your wife will probably have a higher sexual market value (SMV) than you. But, at some point in her late 30s or early 40s, your wife’s SMV will start to decrease a lot faster than your SMV, which will still be quite high. Finding a woman who is 10 to 15 years younger than you would not be out of the question.
This is one reason it is common to see a successful man dump the wife who helped him achieve success once he reaches his forties. He finds that he can still get the attention of very attractive women.
I don’t think this is a big drawback. One 80 year old commenter on Return of Kings posted that he and his wife had been married for over 50 years. He said that he was still attracted to his wife, but he found other women his age very unappealing. He attributed this to a phenomenon he called “wife goggles.” In a certain way, his wife will always be that beautiful young girl that he married. Perhaps it is a grace.
What if you did not get married young?
For men, the good news is that if you did not get married young, it is not the end of the world. This was my own path—I didn’t get married until I was in my 30s. In fact, you can still have almost all the benefits of marrying early if you select a girl who is significantly younger than you are. As our culture gets more deranged, that becomes more difficult to do. Women are more prone to chose an “exciting metrosexual clown” over a man with more substance.
But not all women. Despite this development, it is still possible to find a significantly younger wife. One look at some of the recent crop of feminized young men will reveal that an older man with brains, earning power, and confidence will be able to land a wife who doesn’t want a weak liberal pussy for a husband.
The key is to work on yourself. I give a solid list of things to watch out for in the first post of my series on “How to Find a Wife.” If you do these things, it is not out of the question for a 35 year old man to marry a 22 year old girl.
Caveat
All of this is predicated on being able to find a girl who is marriage material. Don’t ever settle on a woman simply because you feel that time might be running out.
I started to write a few months back about men waiting till they reach their forties before the get married, I was going to fill it with some very good points but they were just my opinions and experiences and I stopped because only half of me really believes it… but that half believes in it very strongly… the other half of me kinda still wishes I had married as a young man. It was what I wanted in my early twenties – true, I had a crappy job and I dropped out of high school and had absolutely no skills… but I had drive and I worked hard at whatever it was I did – I was a hard worker bee… I did not know what it was that I wanted out of life but I knew that I wanted my own family – even as a young man I had tribal dreams – I was in a relationship with a girl for six years, it was a roller-coaster ride and she even dragged me downtown to pick up the papers for a marriage license – that day was the first day I asked myself why people need permission from the government to get married… not sure why she was in such a rush to marry me knowing that I could not afford a wife then… but she did get married a few short months after that…
I did not marry that girl but a better one came along soon after… unfortunately… I was becoming a full blown drunk at that time… but that girl is the one that got away, the first girl is the one that made me crazy – and all men will run into one that makes them crazy, that girl was not the one I should have been with and I know that now that I am older, but Carmen, the one that got away, I am sure did make some one a wife to be proud of, what she saw in me at the time is beyond my understanding to this day.
I believe in destiny Michael, I believe that a man can chose and design his own destiny but that there are something things in life that are simply made to play out a certain way… and sometimes destiny has to knock you on the head before you learn to just leave some things in the hands of a higher power. I have no regrets not marrying young, I don’t know what type of man I would have become if I had, I don’t know what my beliefs would be, what my character would be like, I don’t know if I would be of the same integrity… I don’t know. But I know I like who I am now, and I like the path I am on and the way I have developed as a man and I know that all this is because of the life I got to experience being single for so long… all the good and all the bad is a part of who and why I am the way I am. Will I make a better husband because of it all – yes, I think so, and I think that life experience and wisdom (in all areas) is a big part of what attracts many women to want to be with older gentlemen – but you would have to ask them. No, I have no regrets but I do often wonder what my life would be like today if I did marry young, and now that I am looking to get married, well, it is not as easy as I thought it would be to find a girl to marry – I am in no rush and wont just pick one out of the crowd because I feel time is running out as you say… no, sir… I wont settle. I am not looking for true love, I am a romantic, but experience has taught me to be practical about these things – I know for certain that I will not settle down with a North American… no way, and I do not have any trouble at all attracting women in their twenties, I am currently seeing a young woman across the border in her twenties, but she said something recently that will also have an effect on my getting married – she pointed out that I do not trust anyone, especially women… and she is right, I just can’t let myself trust a woman and I am not sure if it is because I have been with so many (including married ones) that I know what they are like, how devious and cunning and hateful – all my brothers have gone through a divorce and I will not go through that, I am playing for keeps, I need a woman that wants all the same things I do or it wont work, a woman that believes in patriarchy, the church, family and tribe… a smart, sensible, simple girl with nice legs and a disarming smile that not only wants to raise children, but my children, and will dedicate herself to family – not an office job. I have no need for a working girl – though I have admitted that I like those modern working girls at my journal – they don’t need anything from me but sex… they put out and they leave (thanks feminism), but the mother of my children, has to be stronger than a modern girl if we are to leave behind a legacy.
Victor, lots of wisdom in your post. I believe in destiny as well. There is no such thing as chance.
Up until I met my future wife, I had never encountered a woman that I wanted to marry. I had been in a few long-term relationships that I knew that were wrong but I stayed in them in them because I was weak. They were high quality girls, but I was being too rational about it. I was trying to force myself to love them. That never works.
At the time I was really frustrated because I felt that I had wasted time that could have been better spent dating around. It turns out that if I had married earlier, I would have missed my wife who is a perfect match for me. It also wasn’t wasted time. I learned a lot about women in that period, and myself.
The other observation was that I met my future wife through almost no effort on my part. It wasn’t through dating sites or through my efforts at going out to pick up girls. This again points to the concept of destiny and grace.
So everything happens for a reason but most of the time I can’t see the big picture. There is even some reason that a certain group of souls have been born into this dark age. Still, it is comforting to know that there is some plan behind the whole thing.
Great stuff Mike. How old are you? What age did you get married?
Good article, and some very sound advice indeed though finding suitable women is hard, especially if you are geographically limited.
Perhaps of interest to you:
http://citadelfoundations.blogspot.com/2015/10/a-reactionary-policy-on-marriage.html