Ennuipundit misstated something basic in his comment “If man can satisfy his sexual needs, while maintaining relationships that satisfy his need for fellowship and not sacrificing his individual freedom, then why marry.” The problem is not that aging boys can satisfy sexual needs so well as single guys, it is that they know that these days, whatever their lives are like unmarried, the sex stuff isn’t likely to be much better if they are, after a brief initial deceptive orgy. Read “Under the Blanket” (Google the book title, go read the blog) to see why this is a common issue.
There is fault on both sides- we all know many guys who don’t want to grow up, etc. But we also know many guys who are looking for the same kind of lifelong affection connection as women claim to be seeking. What causes those guys to hesitate is not horror stories about family law and property settlements, child support, etc., it is reading about or hearing from their married friends that they are as likely to (pardon the bald crudity, but the bluntness is necessary for the point) get laid as an apparently eligible man out there, as they are as a married man.
In other words, if you get married, you start with an expectation that there will be a sexual accommodation by the alleged love of your life to the reality of male sexuality. And that reality is the fact that men “feel like it” all the time, while the majority of women don’t- biochemically, the sexes are simply not the same because of testosterone.
If a wife (especially one with kids) believes that sex is only for when she feels like it or is “in the mood”- the most common attitude in the post-feminist era- I guarantee that her husband is wondering why he ever got married. He was about as likely to “score” on Saturday night at the country-western bar as he was at home, let alone a frequency actually half or a third as often as his testosterone was urging him to seek, which is coitus a couple of times a day.
I have been successfully married for a very long time- but certainly not as happily as I wish. If I were starting over, I would certainly get married again, but only after executing a pre-nup that specifically addressed the sexual issues in marriage. Compared with that, issues about how to handle money, kids, and all that stuff are meaningless.
Sex is the lubricating oil of the marriage relationship which, by its very nature of close quarters and constant exposures, is naturally frictive in a way that needs to be proactively handled. For a man, it is the foundation of his sense of the union. If the two of you touch each other a lot, and get naked together and rub bodies three times a week, regardless of what mood anyone is in to start with, you will communicate in other areas as well. If you don’t, take an honest inventory of the pairing- and I guarantee that you will find lots of other problems as well.
Without a specific and realistic understanding about this, I can’t say that I would ever advise a man to marry.
