The global recession has even affected arranged marriages

Looking at the matrimonial page of a newspaper in India is a real eye-opener.  Most of the ads are placed by the parents of the individual who is to be matched.   The girl’s parents usually focus on education and career prospects of prospective husbands.  They are often incredibly specific as to what type of career field and what type of education they insist upon.  They sometimes specify which particular universities the guy must have attended.   For our US readers, this would be like specifying Cal Tech or MIT (but not Georgia Tech).  IT jobs have been highly regarded in India because offshoring provided so many well-paying jobs.

The girl’s parents do this because they want to maximize the chances that their daughter marries a guy who can provide financial security for her.   Here is a snippet from a NY Times article that says girls’ parents aren’t as eager to have their daughters marry a guy in the IT field these days:

In a country where most marriages are arranged by parents, the downturn has even taken a toll on the matrimonial prospects of those in technology outsourcing. “Because there is no job guarantees for I.T. people, for the last six months brides’ families have not been accepting grooms from this background,” said Jagadeesh Angadi, a matchmaker in Bangalore.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/business/worldbusiness/04rupee.html?_r=1&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Here in the US these sorts of decisions are, of course, made by the individual getting married rather than that individual’s parents.  But, for women at least, the guy’s career is almost always an important consideration.

That makes sense.  If you have the choice between marrying a guy who can provide financial security or marrying a guy who cannot, I’d suggest picking the former, all other things being roughly equal.  After all, who wants to go through life worried about whether the bills will get paid this month, or whether her husband will lose his job and the couple will have to move in with the in-laws.

Do wives berate their husbands twice as much as husbands berate their wives?

So says the psychologist Richard Driscoll in his recent book, “You Still Don’t Understand”.  I haven’t read the book, but the Amazon blurb contains several assertions that will be provocative to some people.

For example, Dr. Driscoll says women berate their husbands almost twice as often as men berate their wives.  From my own observations this doesn’t surprise me a bit.    When you see married couples in which one spouse is berating the other, isn’t it generally the wife berating the husband?

A funny sitcom illustration of this is found in “Two and a Half Men”.  Charlie Sheen’s brother was married to a woman who is, let’s say, a world-class berator.  In nearly every episode in which she appears she gave him hell, and they weren’t even still married.  Now she’s about to be married to another guy, played by the hilarious Ryan Stiles, who played the tall guy Lewis on “The Drew Carey Show”.  She makes his life a living hell too, all to hilarious effect on the show.  She’s a caricature, but one that isn’t too far removed from how many wives act.

Another revealing conclusion of Dr. Driscoll is that a husband’s willingness to comply with what the wife wants, and not the reverse, is the key to marital success.

This too isn’t surprising.  It seems to be a feature of most marriages I have seen.  And it doesn’t make marriage sound too inviting to guys.  Who wants to be in a relationship in which a pleasant life depends on your doing what your wife wants.  That’s like a job, but one where you don’t get paid (in many cases you are the one who is doing the paying).  Lucky thing most never-married guys don’t know this, at least until it’s too late.

Far too many women act in these ways yet are surprised when guys no longer want to be married to them.

http://www.amazon.com/Still-Dont-Understand-Richard-Driscoll/dp/0963412655/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1224580043&sr=1-6

Engagement rings: making billions while making guys poorer

“Making billions by making you guys poorer” should be the slogan of DeBeers, the international diamond cartel. 

 

It’s astounding how much money a lot of us spend on diamond engagement rings.  A friend of mine spent $20K on the ring he bought three years ago. Another friend of mine spent $6K, and he only makes about $30k/year.  Even that is less than the three-months salary that DeBeers (and most of the bridal business) recommends that the guy spend on a diamond engagement ring. 

 

If you thought it was only two months salary, you are behind the times.  It used to be only two-months salary, but DeBeers upped it to three.  Can you imagine the maker of any other product putting out the word that you should spend a certain percentage of your income to buy their product?  I can’t imagine it would be successful if, say, GM were to advertise that “You should spend ten months salary on a new car.”

 

I read an article last night on how this impressive marketing strategy became successful.  Reduced to its essentials, it is this:

 

The South African diamond producers realized they were mining a lot of diamonds.  Knowing the law of supply and demand, they realized that a huge supply of diamonds on the market would reduce the price they were able to get.  So they formed a cartel, a big company that controlled the supply of diamonds pretty much worldwide.  It helped that almost all the diamonds in the world were found in South Africa.

 

In the late 1930s DeBeers went to an excellent adv. agency in NYC and paid them to undertake a decades-long campaign to boost diamond sales in the US.  The country was in the midst of the Great Depression and few people could afford to buy diamonds.  Even when they did buy diamond eng. rings, they were inexp. little diamonds of poor quality.  So DeBeers wasn’t making much money.  Yet.

 

The agency told DeBeers that times were hard and they would have to convince guys to spend quite a bit of money on diamonds, which meant they couldn’t spend as much on food, clothing, and shelter, you know, necessities. 

 

The agency developed the strategy of selling the idea that only a diamond meant love and commitment.  Among many other techniques, they sent speakers to public schools making this kind of presentation, convincing a generation of young girls that they needed to get a diamond ring before giving it up (the speakers weren’t this direct, of course, but that was the effect).

 

Years later the agency figured out a way to increase their already-vast sales:  convince women that they needed another ring, ten years or so after the marriage.  And now this too is seen as necessary.  So instead of putting $10K in college fund for the couple’s children, or a 401(k) so they won’t be poor in retirement, the couple spends it on another diamond ring.

 

To show how successful the DeBeers ad campaigns have been, I have an example, a friend of mine named Alan.  Alan is a great guy, but he is one of the, let’s say, thriftiest fellows I know.  He squeezes a penny so hard that Abe Lincoln screams. He drove a little old pickup truck for years, even though it didn’t have air-conditioning, and this was in Texas and South Florida.  He brought leftovers for lunch every day (and undoubtedly still does).  He gets his haircuts at home, by his wife using a Ronco Supercut machine.  He gets up at 5AM to take his car to Walmart rather than the 10-minute oil change place to save $5 on the oil change.  He buys his clothes either on clearance sales or at the Thrift Store, second-hand.  I could go on and on, but you get the point: Alan loves to save a buck.  But even he spent thousands on a diamond engagement ring.  And I’m guessing he’ll soon be spending thousands more on the now-obligatory diamond anniversary ring (if he hasn’t already).

 

Another example of a wife’s soft-core contempt for her husband

Last week I wrote a post about Michelle Obama.  It wasn’t political; it just illustrated a mindset that many women have.  They see it as perfectly acceptable to criticize their husbands in contempuous ways.  Usually they do this in small groups, sometimes just among their female friends but sometimes around their husbands and other couples.

I came across another article touching on how Michelle talks about her husband (and in public):

“Never underestimate the influence of a wife who bitch-slaps her husband in public. Early in Obama’s campaign, Michelle Obama could not restrain herself from belittling the senator. ‘I have some difficulty reconciling the two images I have of Barack Obama. There’s Barack Obama the phenomenon. He’s an amazing orator, Harvard Law Review, or whatever it was, law professor, best-selling author, Grammy winner. Pretty amazing, right? And then there’s the Barack Obama that lives with me in my house, and that guy’s a little less impressive,’ she told a fundraiser in February 2007.

‘For some reason this guy still can’t manage to put the butter up when he makes toast, secure the bread so that it doesn’t get stale, and his five-year-old is still better at making the bed than he is.’ New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd reported at the time…”

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JB26Aa01.html

Just think how it would be received if husbands complained this way about their wives.  Their wives, and nearly any woman within earshot, would be appalled.  It’s a double standard.  And I think it’s corrosive to relationships. 

It engenders bad attitudes among women.  It makes them think it’s perfectly ok to talk about their husbands with this soft-core contempt.

I wonder whether this attitude is common among women in other countries?  If not, then it’s another example of a way women from many other countries have a better attitude about guys and about marriage than US women have.  Culture and attitudes matter.

The Three-Pony Rule

I had never heard of the three-pony rule until I read a story on law.com today.  The rule was invoked by the New Jersey Court of Appeals in a ruling overturning the decision of a trial court judge, of Essex County, NJ, awarding Jean Strahan child support in the amount of about $215,00/year.  Jean’s ex-husband had retired from playing professional football. 

For most couples in most states child support is determined based on a formula, which depends on both parents’ income.  But Essex County NJ Superior Court Judge James Convery based his child support award order in this case by taking the ex-wife’s list of needs and making the father pay 91% of them.  These “needs” consisted of, among other things:

“the children giving their nanny a 10-day vacation in Jamaica; diamond jewelry for their grandmother; $30,000 yearly for landscaping expenses; $36,000 a year for “equipment and furnishings”; and $3,000 yearly for audio visual equipment. Jean set their clothing needs at $27,000 a year, since the children needed new outfits every time they saw their father and one of them demanded a new purse every time she left the house.”

The New Jersey Court of Appeals balked at sticking the father with the bill for this life of luxury, saying “[T]he court made no distinction between what needs were reasonable, given the age of the children, and what simply amounted to a ‘fourth pony,’”

“no child, no matter how wealthy the parents, needs to be provided [with] more than three ponies.”

The Appeals Court also overturned the trial court’s sticking the father with the ex-wife’s legal fees.  The two had signed a prenuptial agreement providing that there would be no award of alimony or legal fees.

The Appeals Court’s ruling, while certainly a welcome relief for men in New Jersey, doesn’t mean this ex-husband is out of the woods yet.  The Appeals Court remanded the case back to the trial court and refused to transfer it to a different judge.  If I were the husband I wouldn’t be opening a bottle of champagne.  Judge Convery will now have to determine which of the expenses are reasonable.  And if I’m any judge of New Jersey divorce court judges, he will conclude most of the mother’s list of expenses is reasonable and will liberally dispense the father’s income to the mother.

The mother’s attorney seemed to agree.  “Jean Strahan’s lawyer is likewise optimistic.  ‘We’re glad Judge Convery is remaining with these issues….’ “

This story is a good rebuttal to those people who have no sympathy for husbands, saying if they were too stupid to get a prenup, they deserve what the court gives them (or rather takes from them).  This guy was prudent enough to get a prenup.  But prenups don’t affect child support.  And we see that, at least in many cases, child support can effectively serve as alimony. 

No children need over $600,000/year.   And the checks aren’t written to the children.  Most of this money would be used to subsidize the mother’s life of luxury.

And one more point.  Did we need one more reminder that all guys should leave New Jersey.  If you get divorced, you will almost certainly be reduced to indentured servitude.  New Jersey is one of the worst states in the country for guys. 

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202424084848

This is the attitude I hate

I came across the following article by Margery Eagan in the Boston Herald.  It’s about Michele Obama.  I’m not going to address the presidential race or Michele Obama.  I’m writing because of one sentence this woman wrote:

In my life she’s the sort of woman I love: blunt, tough, smart, sarcastic, a task-master. She tells her kids to make the beds and her husband to dump the garbage.

Imagine how women would react if a husband were admirably described in a magazine profile as a task-master telling his wife to make dinner.  They would go ape-shit.  But this kind of thing is ok because it’s a wife being the task-master.  It’s a nasty double-standard. 

And I don’t think it’s inconsequential.  I think this sort of attitude, expressed in thousands of ways, in magazine articles, on “women’s TV shows”, and various other places, contributes to an anti-male attitude among women.  They have become conditioned to the idea that anti-male attitudes are perfectly ok. 

I think this affects their relations with their husbands and boyfriends.  Perhaps this is what Mr. Practical and I have been getting at when discussing how women from many other countries don’t have the bad attitude that many US women have, and this makes the foreign women better wives.

Here’s a link to the article:

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1114932

I Can’t Blame John Edwards

I’ve spent the past week trying to decide whether I want to weigh in on the John Edwards affair with Rielle Hunter.

I mean…another politician gets caught in an affair with another woman. He asks for forgiveness while his poor wife stands beside him in a laughable sign of unity. And my initial response is always the same…

BULLSHIT!!!

Let’s have a moment of truth, shall we?

There are two types of married men:

1) Those who cheat on their wives, and

2) Those who think about cheating on their wives.

And every single married guy will ask himself the same question before crossing that line into adultery…

…will I get caught?

You know Johnny Boy asked himself that very question. And you have to admit that Rielle looks pretty good for a chick in her 40s.

So John’s decision came down to this…

…be faithful to my plain jane wife at home or bang this vibrant blonde.

I think the decision is easy. Don’t you?

Will I get caught?

I imagine Johnny Boy will do a better job of checking the birth control angle before he decides to strap his freak on.

In the meantime, he can rub this episode in the face of a certain conservative commentator who happened to question his sexuality a few months ago (and also happens to be a hot looking babe).

So John Edwards…step up to the podium and tell Ann Coulter to go $%&^# herself.

What John Edwards Can Get Away With That You Other Guys Cannot

Roissy has a hilarious, but spot-on discussion of why John Edwards can not only get away with fathering a child by his mistress, but get his wife to cover for him by lying to the media:

John Edwards’ wife lies for him knowing he was fucking and impregnating a new age whore while she lay in a hospital bed with cancer.

Somewhere in America a dutiful beta husband was just served divorce papers and subsequent financial ruin for no reason he can discern except that he didn’t excite his wife’s loins anymore.

People sometimes ask why I so deliberately and unapologetically act in my own self-interest and take what I want.
Because I know the score.
And you should too.

Here’s the link.  Women, you probably shouldn’t click on it and read it.  It’s pretty raw and in-your-face.

http://roissy.wordpress.com/2008/08/19/the-incredible-pull-of-alpha-males/

Magazine for Whipped Husbands

 More hilarious stuff from Roissy. 

http://roissy.wordpress.com/2008/01/14/dont-get-married/

Guy forced to live with his mother bc he pays almost all his income to his ex-wife

Guys, you should read the following story before deciding whether to get married or have a kid.  I regularly read and hear horror stories about guys having to pay almost all of their income in child support (and that’s not even counting alimony and other payments).  

I came across the following account posted by a woman who is married to a guy who is paying almost all of his take-home pay to his ex-wife in child support and similar payments.   I haven’t seen the court order or any of the documentation, but I am somewhat familiar with Michigan law on this subject and this account rings true. The only thing the account leaves out is the number of children.  This is crucial information bc child support varies according to the number of children.

The guy makes $60,000/year and his ex-wife makes $55,900.  The guy was ordered  to pay $1,699/month in child support.  He is also obligated to pay for daycare.  The daycare facility the wife selected costs $1,500/month.  The guy is also responsible for providing medical insurance for the kids, as well as life insurance on his own life (so his ex-wife will continue to be paid if he dies).

I did some quick calculations of this guy’s after tax income and probable medical and life insurance payments.  When these things, as well as the child support and daycare payments are subtracted from his income, I think he would have only a few thousand dollars left to support himself.

He apparently had to move in with his mother because he couldn’t even afford a rented room.  The guy is living below the poverty level so he can pay his ex-wife a huge percentage of his after-tax income in child support.  He’s living in poverty and his subsidy to his ex-wife brings her income up to $76,300.

And if he falls behind, God help him.  He could lose his drivers license.  He could even go to jail.

You’ve got to ask yourself: do you want to run the risk of a life of poverty? 

http://www.expertlaw.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53608