Happiness or Longevity? – An Experiment

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About a year ago I caused quite a stir, as I usually do when I discuss these topics, when I made a post about yet more scientific proof that most women eventually get sexually bored with their husbands. This bolsters my overall point that human beings were never designed for long-term monogamy, and that choosing long-term monogamy as a life path is a very big mistake for most people in the 21st century; at least for those under the age of 60 or so.

-By Caleb Jones

I got a lot of traffic from that post, with many different sites commenting about it. One site in particular was a blue pill forum called Talk About Marriage, a forum for, you guessed it, married people. A year ago, someone made a thread there about my post asking for opinions. As you might imagine, it was a popular thread with widespread disagreement about what I said and what all these scientists said, since clearly science is bullshit and scientists are all liars.

Though a small handful of people tried to make some points, most dissenters (on that site and other sites who mentioned me) threw out all the usual personal attacks I've been getting for many years when I talk about monogamy not working. Things like I'm just pissed off because I got divorced (almost a decade ago), nothing I say can be trusted because I sell books (so you can't trust anything you find at your local bookstore; all those authors are selling books!), I'm an asshole because my language is harsh (everyone knows harsh=incorrect), I'm so shallow I can only date young dumb women (even though I regularly date women in their 30s and 40s, including right now), all I care about is sex (which is why I talk so much about the importance of long-term relationships), etc. In other words, all the stuff that you already know is inaccurate if you've read more than one or two blog posts here.

As is often the case on the internet, personal attacks are used by people when they can't respond to the actual points I'm making. It's easier to have "you're dumb!" discourse rather than have an adult discussion about these very important issues.
Anyway, reading through the comments on this web site and a few others, I was starkly reminded about a very interesting difference between married people and unmarried people.
So I decided to run a little experiment in order to demonstrate it. You may have been a part of this experiment without realizing it. The results were interesting.

Happiness vs. Longevity

One of the biggest differences between people, particularly women, who have been married a long time and people who are unmarried is their differences on their views of sex, happiness, and longevity of the relationship/marriage.

I have said before that people in marriages, or people who are very pro-monogamy, generally view the length of the marriage as more important than the happiness of the two participants.
This is a common scenario that is played out in modern society. A woman who has been married well past the three-year mark will be talking to some other people, most of whom are unmarried. They will start talking about their relationships. Soon she will be bragging (or at least heavily implying) that she is the most successful person, in terms of relationships, than anyone else in the group.

Why? Because she's been married for 14 years and hasn't gotten divorced (yet). Everyone else in the group is either single, dating, divorced, or newly married. So she "wins."
In other words, her only criteria for success is how long she's been married. That's it. Nothing else matters.

The sneaky part is she neglects to tell the group that in those last 14 years she's:
Been in and out of marital counseling.
Been stressed out of her mind with financial problems while trying to raise two kids.
Often does not get a full night's sleep.
Had numerous arguments with her husband about how he wants to have sex when she doesn't.
Had numerous arguments with her husband about the kids.
Had numerous arguments with her husband about money and financial issues.
Has been unable to go on numerous trips and vacations she's really wanted to have (including long, jealous meanderings on Facebook looking at photos of the unmarried or childless people's cool trips/vacations/events/cruises.)
Has gained 37 pounds since her wedding.
Feels stressed so often she now considers regular stress as a normal condition of her life.

But see, none of that matters. Despite all that pain and chaos, she has this thing called a "marriage" she can point to in order to indicate her "success."
She will also neglect to note that most of the people in the group she's talking to are very, very happy. Way happier than she is and happier more often. Most of the unmarried people are usually smiling, happy, not nearly as stressed, and can do whatever they want with their lives, while she's usually stressed and complaining about money, husband, work, kids, etc.

But that also doesn't matter. She's more "successful" than those happy people. She's "made it" as a married woman. Hopefully those silly, unfortunate, unmarried people will get married themselves soon and have long, stressful, freedomless marriages like her.
I know many married women like this and I'm sure you do too. (It's interesting to note that most married men tend to not defend marriage like this...but that's a topic for another time.)

In other words, the fact she's had a long marriage is more important to her than the fact she's not nearly as happy as she was when she was unmarried. Happiness is not her goal. Relationship longevity is. As long as her marriage lasts a really long time, ideally "forever," she wins. The fact she's often unhappy and her husband is often unhappy is completely irrelevant. The "good of the marriage" has superseded her natural and healthy human desire for happiness. All those crazy, right-wing, Christian fundamentalists would be very proud of her.

The Reduced Importance of Sex
There's another very large difference you'll see between marred vs. unmarried people, particularly married women. It's the importance of sex in one's life.

Have you ever had someone in conversation say to you, "Geez! Is sex really that important?" Likely you have.

Now here's the fascinating thing. Think back to the last person you heard say that (or saw type that online). I'm willing to bet that A) it was a woman and B) it was a married woman. Moreover, I'm also willing to bet it was a woman who has been married for longer than three years. Longtime readers here are already aware of the biological and mental changes women go through after three years in a cohabiting, monogamous relationship to the same man.

Try this as an experiment. Next time you hear anyone say any variation of "Geez! Is sex really that important?", immediately take note of the gender and marital status of that person. You'll find that damn near 100% of the time, it will be a married woman.

I have literally never heard a man say that about sex, married or not. I have also never heard a single woman say that about sex. As a matter of fact, most unmarried women put a huge priority on sex and never downplay its importance. But a woman who's been monogamously married for many years will often complain that men/women/younger women/people are "obsessed with sex" or "focus too much on sex" or are "all about sex" or "C'mon guys, is sex really that important?!?".

This even applies if it's the same woman in both cases. That unmarried 24 year-old woman will love sex and never downplay its importance, but meet up with her 10 years later, when she's 34 and has been married for seven years, and now if she sees two unmarried guys have a long talk about sex, she'll pipe in, "Geez guys. Is sex really that important?" Interesting that she would have never, ever said anything like that when she was unmarried, single, and dating (and free and happy).

(Side note: This is very likely what you get to look forward to if you decide to get monogamously married to a woman someday. Don't tell me you weren't warned. But yes, yes, that won't happen to you because You Know What You're Doing™ and She's Not Like The Rest™. I know.)

The Experiment
Okay, back to the little research experiment I decided to run.
You may recall that about a year ago I had a poll on this blog asking several questions about happiness in a relationship/marriage vs. the longevity of a relationship/marriage. Once I had a few hundred responses, I shut the poll down. Then I went over to the Talk About Marriage forum, signed up as user OrangeCrush1. I made a few honest posts in a few threads so my post count wouldn't look too low.

Then I posted the exact same poll in that forum's main sub-forum. The thread is right here. The poll asked the exact same questions with the exact same wording as used on this blog, within the character limits of the forum's software. Granted, there were far less votes when I did this on the forum than when I did it here at this blog, but at least there was some data; I'll take what I can get.

So as to not tip my hand, I made sure not to shoot my mouth off in the thread until there had been a decent amount of poll votes. (Once I did, I encountered the usual negative reactions with no actual points.)
Today I'm going to report to you the differences in those two polls, between male red pill manosphere readers and the male and female married (or at least pro-marriage) blue pill folks.

Your first reaction might be something like, "Well duh Blackdragon. Of course we know what manosphere guys will say vs. a bunch of married women. That was a waste of your time." I understand, but consider the following:
As a few of you noted when I did the poll here a year ago, I worded the questions to hint strongly that I wanted people to answer in the direction of happiness instead of longevity. This made it very clear that there would be no mistaking it if someone really preferred longevity over happiness. I was prepared to be surprised. I was prepared to see that the married people indeed admitted that shorter relationships were ideal, or that happiness was more important. I've been surprised before, so I was willing to give the married folks the benefit of the doubt before I made sweeping assumptions. I wanted some empirical numbers I could actually point to and show naysayers, as opposed to me just standing here and blathering about my opinion with no data.

The Results
Here are the poll results. The percentages below are rounded to the nearest whole number.
Knowing how you are, and how people work in the real world, what to you is the ideal length for a relationship?

Manosphere / Red Pill Readers

Under 3 months: 1%
Under 6 months: 2%
6 months - 3 years: 16%
3 - 7 years: 7%
15 - 25 years: 1%
"The rest of your life": 8%
Whenever your children grow up and move out (regardless of how unhappy you are in the interim): 4%
As soon as I get bored; I don't care how long it is: 11%
As soon as I get unhappy; I don't care how long it is: 47%

Notice that 58% of you said that a relationship should end as soon as you get unhappy or bored. This means you hold personal happiness as a higher priority than the length of some relationship you've entered into. I agree with you. I think forcing yourself to carry on in a relationship where you are clearly bored or unhappy just for the "good of the relationship" is a waste of your life, considering you only live once.

It's also interesting to note that 19% of you believe that the ideal length of a relationship is under 3 years.
Only 8% of you thought "the rest of your life" was ideal. Clearly, the other 92% of you are all evil, selfish, jerkwads. How dare you not conform to societal pressures!
Okay, let's see what the nice, appropriate, societally-programmed people think:

Married / Blue Pill Readers

Under 3 months: 0%
Under 6 months: 0%
6 months - 3 years: 3%
3 - 7 years: 10%
7 - 15 years: 3%
15 - 25 years: 3%
"The rest of your life": 57%
Whenever your children grow up and move out (regardless of how unhappy you are in the interim): 7%
As soon as I get bored; I don't care how long it is: 0%
As soon as I get unhappy; I don't care how long it is: 17%

So the "rest of your life" people comprise 57% of blue pill respondents; no big surprise there. My only surprise was that the 57% wasn't even higher. However, even among blue pill people the evil and selfish happiness-loving people are strongly represented at 17%, and another 13% think the ideal relationship is less than seven years. Interesting. So even among pro-marriage people, there is some strong weakening in Societal Programming. I guess that gives me a little hope. I guess when you see married people all around you getting divorced and cheating on each other, it's hard to justify the bullshit Disney fairy tale.

So there you go. Empirical evidence that pro-monogamy / pro-traditional-marriage people tend to view the length of a relationship as more important than their own personal happiness or the happiness of their spouse. Thank you very much for all who participated. I did it for science. 🙂

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