Is Marriage Dying & Is It Even Worth It?

What's going on, team? Why are marriage rates in decline? There seems to be a disproportionate amount of people that are not only checking out from dating, but are just checking out from marriage all together. And so there was some recent data that came out from the United States Congress, the Joint Economic Commission, and they talked about that marriage is now between 6.9% and 6.5% marriages per thousand people. That is down significantly from the 1980s to 1990s and the early 2000s. And what seems to be fascinating is that as we reach this sort of all time low within marriages, there seems to be a couple things sort of driving this. And so I wanted to talk about why did we get married in the first place? Is marriage really even worth it? And, and why might you do it? Right, so I'm going to share a little bit about my personal story towards the end. But one of the things that I found fascinating as I was doing research for this was that trends that are being set right now are showing that people are just opting out of dating and marriage altogether. Right? There's men between 18 and 29, 66% of men in that age bracket are single. And of that age range, 50% of men say that they're not even looking for a partner or a relationship. And then you have women who projections are showing that by 2040, 45% of women between the age of 25 and 45 are going to be child and single. Right. So not in a marriage and without children. And that's the highest that'll ever have been, period. And not only that, and this is a different topic, and maybe I'll talk about this in a different video of those women who don't have children right post menopause. The women who sort of get out of the window that they can have children. Eight out of 10 of those women say that it was non intentional, meaning that they, most of them wanted to have children, but the timing wasn't right or, you know, whatever the, whatever the reason was that it just didn't work out. So it's not that they weren't able to reproduce, it's that it just never happened for them. And this is a, you know, tremendous amount of grief is coming up for a lot of women around this topic. But let's talk about marriage specifically. So as marriage rates decline, I think one of the things that is important to talk about is why did we get married in the first place? Right. And so I'm going to bucket this into a couple just sort of Three very clear and simple things. And then we'll talk about, you know, maybe some ideas around why, why this is happening. So first and foremost was economic reasons, right? Men and women got together. There was very clear sort of roles. Not saying that that's good or bad, but it's just the way it was. And, you know, the men would go out and work, the women would raise the children. And so there was an economic incentive for women to be with a man, right? There was a sort of this economic force of, okay, if I'm gonna have a child, it's probably better to do that with somebody who can provide a certain lifestyle, right? Buy us a house, we can have a car, or before that, you know, a horse. But that was sort of the structure, right? And so for a very, very long time, for the most part, men went out into the workforce of the world. They tilled the farms, you know, they built the buildings, they built the cities, the infrastructure, the pipes, the whole thing. And women were making sure that the family was being tended to at home. So there was this economic structure that was in place. The second big one was religion. You know, you were getting married for religious purposes that, you know, sort of showcasing that your relationship was permitted by God and that you were following certain orthodoxies and, you know, certain ideologies, and you were abiding by certain rules that were laid out by your religion and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right? So it was all sort of underneath this religious umbrella. And then lastly, it gave people a very clear sense of function or purpose or role, right? So as I was talking about before, for a lot of men, like, this was your function, right? You were the provider. You, for better or for worse, you were expected to go out and work and make a living to make sure that your family provided. And I think in some ways, we structured our family systems like that for a very long time because we've generally built our social structures to coincide with how we've evolved, right? With evolutionary processes. We've gone out. Historically, men have gone out around the world and been the hunters, right? They've been the ones that have gone out. And, you know, if you're. If you were in North America a thousand years ago, braved not getting eaten by a grizzly bear or a cougar or whatever it was. And, you know, in other parts of the world, it was going out to hunt for antelope and make sure that you weren't going to get eaten by a lion, you know, or a jaguar or something like that. And so our social structures have, generally speaking, coincided with our evolutionary structures, but we've reached this place where that's not necessary anymore. Right. So the economic incentives have basically dissolved. Right, because 42% of American households have women out earning the men. So, you know, the economic sort of structure that was in place before, that's gone. So a lot of women, they're not marrying for security or. Or financial incentive. The religious piece is very quickly dissolving. Right. There's less people going to church than ever before. Something like 40 of Americans identify spiritual but not religious. So they're not. They're not getting married for religious purposes. And then the role in the function part has started to dissolve as well. So as. As women have become more fiercely financially independent, more men are hearing things like, I don't need a man. You know, I don't need a man to provide for me. Those types of things. And so where a man used to be, okay, my. Why I would get married as a man is because I'm going to provide, I'm going to protect my role in this relationship has a very specific purpose and function, and that can give me a sense of purpose in life. And there's many benefits to that for a number of reasons, which I'm not going to get into. There's also, obviously some constraints that we could talk about. But I think the biggest thing that I've come to is, well, why would anybody get married now? You know, if you're a man, you know, because, like, 95% of you watching my channel and. And on the podcast, there's more women that tune in, for sure. But if you're on YouTube, it's like 95% dudes. If you're watching this or you're listening to this and you're a guy, you're probably thinking, like, why would I bother getting married? And I got to tell you, I asked this question for myself for a very long time, you know, make good money. I'm tall, I'm attractive. You know, I like traveling the world. I have a really good social circle within my male friend group. And so there really wasn't a lot of incentive. I wasn't getting married for economic purposes. I wasn't getting married for a sense of purpose or function. I wasn't getting married for religion. And so I sort of grappled with this notion of, like, well, why would I get married? Like, what's the purpose of doing that? Because really, I think one of the other things is that marriage, marriage still to this day, from a sort of Judicial and legal system is still predicated on this notion that men are the providers. And so you can very clearly look at the data and, and see that historically, within the last sort of 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, but especially still today where 42% of American households, women are out earning men, men get the short end of the stick when divorce happens. And the big challenge is that, you know, something like 75% of divorces are initiated by women. And so a lot of guys, you hear a lot of guys of like, why the hell would I get married? You know, there's no role or function for me. I'm not getting married for religion. You know, I'm not getting married to like provide for my family. You know, my wife is making good money or my girlfriend's making good money, like why would I go do that? Especially knowing that the chances are if this doesn't work out, she's going to be ending the marriage, right? She's going to be the one leaving. And if we have kids or financial assets, I'm probably going to get the short end of the stick on that. I'm probably going to get shafted in some way, shape or form. And there's of course exceptions to the rules, but statistically, men are going to go through that divorce and they're going to have to pay more in alimony, they're going to have to pay more in child support, they're going to lose more of their financial assets. That's just the way that our court system still operates. So I thought about all of this data for a very long time and I thought about why would I want to get married? Because when I met my now wife and we've been married for four years, we just celebrated our four year anniversary. I thought about this for a while and I really came to the place of like, well, I'm not getting married for any of those reasons. And you know, we're going to keep our financial assets sort of separate and we're going to have agreements around our, you know, our finances and my wealth and her money. And I got to the place where I decided that I wanted to get married because I saw it not as a religious thing or any of those things, but actually as a, as matrimony, as a commitment to the relationship itself. And so I think one of the things that I've noticed within our modern culture is that relationships are paper thin, you know, and the, the excuses and the reasons that people have for bouncing out of a relationship is so high. I mean, I see all these stories Online of all these sort of like, you know, I'm like, oh, I'm. I broke up with him because I want to go and live my best life and I just, I want to be free and I want to express my authentic, my most authentic self and are like, I broke up with her because, you know, she wanted too much from me and she was asking too much. And, and so I think what I see is that when things get hard in relationships, which of course they're going to get hard, the, the tendency of people is to, is to peace out, is to not push through the challenge. And the beauty of a, of a powerful relationship is that it's going to help you, right? Carl Jung said that the fastest racehorse in the race of individuation is marriage, AKA relationship. And so the real sort of underlying principle that I came to around why get married is that you are making a declaration not just to that other person and not necessarily to yourself, but to the structure of relationship itself, to the relationship itself between you and this person. And you're saying, I'm going to commit to taking care of, protecting and providing for this third entity that is that exists between us. And that in doing so, I'm going to learn something fundamental about being human, about tending to this earth, about tending to this culture and society that we live in that's so chaotic and that so many people, as soon as things get challenging and hard, they peace out. Now, I'm not saying that you should get married and if abuse starts to happen that you stay in it, or if it's super unhealthy that you stay in it. But I'm saying that you make a commitment to something that is bigger than the context of, oh, we're dating, right? Oh, we just live together, we're in this relationship. And maybe you don't need to get married to do that. Maybe there's a different way for you to go about it. But for me, matrimony was the recognition that I was making a commitment to something that was beyond just a relationship, that was beyond just living together and sort of dedicating myself as a man to this, this third body of the relationship and saying, I'm going to commit to tending to this aspect of life. And when things get hard, I know I've also found a woman who's going to do the same thing. You know, that that's very important for her, that we're both dedicated to, almost like tending to a child. You know, if you have a child together, you both parent it. Well, when you get married. The whole purpose of it, again, if you strip away all of the religious and, you know, whatever, is to learn to take care of something else that's bigger than you and your relationship is bigger than you. And so. And it's bigger than just the other person. Right? So I think that's one of the reasons. That's the main reason why I got married, is that it was a dedication and a commitment to provide for and to protect something that was bigger than me, that was bigger than my partner. And it was a declaration of something more meaningful than just, you know, we've lived together for seven years. So. Comment below if you're watching this on YouTube. You know, I see that there's a bunch of you that are listening to my podcast that are tuning into my YouTube channel that are not subscribed. And so please go and do that. Don't forget to man it forward. Share this with somebody else that you know will enjoy it or enjoy the conversation. And comment below on YouTube and let me know your thoughts. I'd love to hear. So until next week, it's Connor Beaton signing off.