My parents, lovely people both, stayed together in an unhappy marriage “for the kids.” They taught me by example to delay marriage at minimum until I was 30. I spent my 20s and early 30s working abroad and picking up a couple graduate degrees in the US.
By the time I reached my early 30s and began to look for a wife in the US I found in the market the following… (1) immature women who had married at 24 wanting to be taken care of and were subsequently divorced and living out some sort of post-adolescent partying fantasy at 30; (2) women who had unresolved male/father issues and whom I didn’t want to get near.
It was nearly impossible to find an educated, professional, single American (or Canadian) woman who was secure enough to truly enjoy solitude and independence.
One of my lovers (a woman with a flourishing career) who was desperate to get remarried actually told me once that it was OK for me to want to be alone occasionally. In fact, she said that she would permit me to have an office/den in our house into which I would be allowed to retreat occasionally. Needless to say I exited swiftly.
I ended up marrying in my late 30s an exquisite, foreign-born woman who emigrated to North America after getting a PhD and establishing her career. She is brave and resourceful having left all of her family, whom she adores, to move halfway around the world in order to secure the life she wants.
She wanted a husband who was a companion, a friend, and a father to children. Most of all, however, she wanted independence within interdependence.
We encourage each other to take time away from each other and our family in order to maintain and develop friendships and simply to get a break.
Accordingly, our marriage works extremely well. I find marriage fulfilling and even better than my wonderful single life. But boy did I have to search long and hard. I completely understand why men don’t marry.
BTW, this is a phenomenon in Canada, too, where I lived for a seven years. Canadian laws are even more discouraging of marriage than American ones are.
