Tag Archives: failed marriage

December 27, 2018 · 12:32 am

When Waiting Until Your Wedding Night To Have Sex Fails

weddingnight

One of the most important decisions anyone can make for themselves is when they choose to have sex. Some seek to do it the first chance they get. Some prefer to wait until they’ve found that special someone with which they want to spend the rest of their lives. Most people render their decision within that vast gray area in between.

While we like to think society has become less uptight when it comes to sex, there’s still some lingering prudishness from centuries of taboos, traditions, and general ignorance. We’ve made a lot of progress from the days when we believed that a woman’s womb could become displaced and that male masturbation causes blindness, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement.

While everyone is different in how they approach their sex lives, the idea of waiting until marriage is still held up as an ideal. It’s the standard championed by religious zealots, social conservatives, and parents who just don’t want to think too much about the sex lives of their children. It’s also the cornerstone of abstinence only sex education, which is often the only sex education young people get.

Now, I’m not going to bemoan the ineffectiveness of this type of education. Many people far smarter and more resourceful than me have already studied just how damaging this approach can be for vulnerable youth. Instead, I want to focus on the actual merit behind this ideal championed by so many. The education programs may be ineffective, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be something to this ideal.

Like so many other things related to sex and human nature, the answer isn’t simple or straightforward. In fact, it’s a lot more complicated than the most religious conservative and the most lenient liberal will ever admit. That’s because people, in general, are complicated. The ideal that works for most people still won’t work for everyone. There are countless factors involved on whether waiting to have sex is a good idea.

You don’t have to look too far to find personal stories about people who regretted waiting until their wedding night to have sex. You also don’t have to look far to find stories from couples who claim waiting was beneficial. No matter what your sexual politics may be, you can find anecdotes supporting both sides of the spectrum and every point in between.

That said, there are a few common themes for those who regretted waiting and those who believe waiting benefited them in the long run. In the interest of simplifying the many complications that go into peoples’ sex lives, I think it’s worth highlighting the issues that made waiting the wrong decision for some couples.

Issue #1: They Waited For The Wrong Reasons

This is where religious and cultural influences often skew the decision. It’s also the issue in which shame, misplaced guilt, and taboos really warp a person’s attitude towards sex, love, and marriage. It’s one thing to want to wait until marriage because you’re not comfortable getting that intimate with someone too soon. It’s quite another when you wait because you’re afraid you’ll be punished by a prudish deity.

I’ve already noted before how religion can skew sexual attitudes to destructive extremes. There are more than a few stories about people who justified waiting with religion, only to regret it later on. This kind of impact tends to affect women more than men, but men aren’t immune from it either. Attitudes, believes, and misinformation can skew decisions regarding sex for all the wrong reasons.

At the end of the day, using religion as an excuse to wait is just that. It’s an excuse and not a reason. If it’s not in line with your actual desires, then it’s like trying to exercise by lifting bags of feathers. It’s not going to have the desired effects.

Issue #2: Expectations Not Matching Reality

Even without the religious or cultural influences, waiting until marriage is often framed as this big culmination for a relationship. It’s set up as this magical moment out of a fairy tale, albeit one that’s R-rated. Couples build up all this energy and anticipation, so much so that it skews the actual mechanics of sex.

This has led to more than a few awful wedding nights. Those issues are only compounded for people who didn’t get a good education on basic human anatomy. Not knowing what an orgasm or a clitoris is can be a huge liability for any couple wanting to have a memorable experience. Not knowing what a refractory period is can be just as awkward.

Beyond just making the first time anything but magical, it can negatively impact the course of an otherwise loving relationship. If all those expectations don’t pan out, then that undermines the confidence two people have in their relationship. For some people, it takes time and effort to develop a meaningful sex life and waiting can put them behind the curve.

Issue #3: Not Knowing (Or Communicating) Intimate Knowledge

This feeds off the issues that come with poor sexual education, but in a more intimate context. Even if you know how your partner’s genitals work and waited until marriage for non-religious reasons, there’s still a chance that the wedding night will end poorly.

This is where even comprehensive sex education comes up short. Those same teachers, preachers, and parents will say waiting until marriage is a good thing, but they won’t offer much advice on how to make it good after the wedding. The assumption is a couple will just figure it out and that’s a misguided assumption, to say the least.

Not knowing what your partner wants or even likes will make it difficult to have a satisfying sex life, even after the wedding night. Lingering taboos surrounding sex certainly don’t help. Maybe your partner finds out they like being on top. Maybe they like a certain position that’s awkward for you. Maybe they’re into kinky things that they didn’t realize.

Waiting until the wedding night to share this information can be a problem, among other things. It can also lead to a communications deficit between partners and that’s never good for a relationship.

Issue #4: Having Entirely Different Levels Of Desire

Say, for instance, one person has a veracious sex drive. They’re not going to be satisfied doing it twice a year on Valentine’s Day and their anniversary. They want to do it frequently and for extended periods of time. That’s just how their wired.

Now, imagine another person who is the exact opposite. They’re just not very sexual, by nature. They’re the kind of person who can have sex a few times a year with their partner and be perfectly satisfied. They don’t feel the need to do anything too elaborate. They’re just wired that way.

Given such disparity, do you think these two would be compatible lovers? Do you think it would help or hurt their relationship if they learned of their discrepancy in desire on their wedding night? Chances are that relationship will have some serious obstacles that may not be reconcilable.

Knowing your partner’s level of desire is a very important thing to communicate for any couple, married or not. Waiting until the wedding to even confront that issue is sure to compound those problems. If every functional relationship is built on good communication, then waiting in this context counts as a major oversight.

Issue #5: Not Understanding That A Good Sex Life Requires Effort

This goes right back to that magical fantasy that waiting until marriage is supposed to feed into. The idea that the first time will be mind-blowingly magical is akin to thinking you’ll play like LeBron James the first time you pick up a basketball. Like any skill or experience, you actually need to work on it. Just going over Lebron’s practice regimen is proof of that.

Thankfully, nature gives people plenty of incentive to practice making love. If orgasms and love aren’t good enough, then you’re just being difficult. However, for some couples who wait, the notion of practice almost seems strange. Those who end up having a bad wedding night tend to have negative expectations moving forward. Religious and cultural taboos only make it worse.

It’s odd how we understand the need to put in the work for so many other skills, but make this fanciful exception when it comes to sex. The idea of waiting until marriage and sex not being more meaningful just undermines the narrative. It makes for a nasty combination of flawed assumptions, inflated expectations, and intimate ignorance that make a satisfying wedding night next to impossible.

Even with all these issues, it’s still entirely possible for a couple to wait until their wedding night and still have a satisfying sex life. That certainly happens and I’ve even known some couples who took that approach. I’ve also known couples who didn’t wait until their wedding night, but still had a successful marriage.

Every couple is different. Every relationship is going to be subject to a wide range of complications and influences, be they cultural or personal. For some, waiting until the wedding night is the right decision. For others, it’s the worst decision they could make. Figuring it out is difficult and nobody wants to figure it out the hard way.

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February 8, 2018 · 5:41 am

Why Men And Women Cheat (And Lessons To Learn From It)

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As an unapologetic romance fan, I concede that I often talk about love the same way dog lovers talk about puppies. I go on and on about how wonderful it is, but often gloss over the nasty parts. In the same way those dog lovers don’t dwell on all the times their beloved companion shits on the rug, I don’t dwell on the more painful aspect of romance.

Well, in the same way ignoring the pile of dog poop doesn’t make the stench go away, ignoring those painful elements of romance doesn’t make them any less relevant. Even those who aren’t romance fans understand that romance often involves tragedy. It’s no coincidence that some of the most famous love stories, from “Romeo and Juliet” to “Titanic,” involve a hefty bit of heartache.

I would argue that’s exactly what makes love and stories about romance so powerful. There’s a significant risk of heartache, rejection, and loss. There’s real pain that comes with pursuing romance, but the we gladly risk that pain because the rewards can be as fulfilling as they are sexy. I’ve done more to highlight the breadth of those rewards in my novels, especially with stories like “Passion Relapse.”

However, the pain that comes from the other side of that coin can be just as dramatic, if not more so. Anyone who has ever seen old episodes of “Jerry Springer” understands this to some extent. It’s not usually the kind of drama that ends with two lovers dying in each other’s arms or Rose not making room for Jack on that floating plank. More often than not, it’s a more frustrating kind of drama.

In many respects, the unsexiest version of this drama has to do with cheating. To some, that’s the much more dreaded C-word. Cheating is to romance what food poisoning is to Thanksgiving dinner. It is the worst-case scenario for those seeking the joys and appeals associated with romance. It is also one of those unfortunate elements that plays out in real life more often than it does in sexy romance novels.

It’s unromantic, but inescapable. Cheating happens and it happens a lot. While it doesn’t happen as often as “Jerry Springer” might have us believe, it happens often enough that it’s a legitimate concern among lovers. That’s why modern marriage laws, however skewed they might be, often account for infidelity.

In the same way there has never been a drug-free society, there has never been a society where cheating and infidelity has not occurred to some extent. From our caveman ancestors to the increasingly-uptight Millennials, the risk of cheating is there and the rise of social media and online dating sites like Ashley Madison are only making it easier.

I’ve talked a bit about cheating when I’ve discussed jealousy and our approach to marriage in modern society. Within the context of those discussions, cheating is a significant portion of those issues, but it’s still only part of a larger whole. It’s still a significant stain on the pursuit of romance, but it doesn’t completely overshadow it.

To make sense of it, as difficult as that may be, it’s necessary to focus on the reasons why people cheat. To anyone who has ever been the victim of a cheating lover, that may mean poking at old wounds and for that, I apologize. I admit it’s somewhat underhanded to suggest there are reasons why people cheat instead of just excuses, but to make sense of cheating overall, we need to accept that there are reasons behind it.

Listen to any story about cheating, be it a magazine article or a poorly-directed reality show, and you’ll notice a few themes about cheating. For one, there is a gender disparity in the numbers. Statistically speaking, men do cheat more often than women. However, the difference in those numbers isn’t quite as vast as the “Mad Men” stereotypes would have us believe.

As to why the gender disparity exists, there are just as many theories about that as well. I’ve talked somewhat about those disparities in discussions about sexual promiscuity and gender double standards. However, those theories don’t always explain the reasons behind cheating. In fact, the process for gathering data on cheating is exceedingly tricky.

Absent an underlying theory, we’re left with a diverse list of reasons that men and women give for their infidelity. According to WebMD, men and women cheat in different ways. For men, it’s often physical, a method of meeting unmet needs. For whatever reason, they’re no longer satisfied with their spouse and cheating is either a way to meet those needs or escape from that spouse.

For women, the act of cheating often has more emotional connotations. While meeting a physical need is part of it, women are more inclined to seek an emotional connection when they cheat. That’s not to say that some women just want some sexual variety or some men don’t fall in love with those they’re cheating with, but these are the popular narratives and some of it does bear out in the data.

Like I said earlier, though, the disparity in that data is not exceedingly vast and there are a lot of issues associated with gathering that data in the first place. If you accept the rule of the great Dr. House, “The most successful marriages are based on lies,” then it’s almost impossible to ascertain just how much cheating is going on and why it’s happening.

Even if it’s impossible to know, there are lessons we can learn from the reasons and excuses that people give. Chief among the reasons men give for cheating involve seeking new intimate experiences, either out of dissatisfaction or boredom. Given how I’ve explored the impact of boredom before, I think that is likely a bigger factor than most care to admit.

With women, the reasons often involve a lack of satisfaction that goes beyond physical. It’s not just that they feel unsatisfied. The underlying theme often involves their sentiment that their partner is no longer putting in the kind of effort they did when they fell in love. That lack of effort gives the impression that they don’t care anymore, leading women to seek out someone who does care.

In scrutinizing these reasons that vary widely between gender, cultures, and personality types, there does appear to be one common theme that binds both genders when it comes to cheating. Whether it’s physical or emotional, it often comes down to the perception that someone in the relationship isn’t putting in the effort anymore. Either they don’t have the energy or just don’t care enough.

In either case, the context of the cheating seems less about meeting a need and more about finding someone who will match your passionate efforts. Regardless of whatever gender disparity may or may not be at work with cheating, there’s no denying that men and women are passionate creatures. We each seek outlets for our passion and if we’re not getting it from that outlet, we’re going to seek another.

That’s not to say that some who cheat are just looking for an exciting and novel experience. That’s another inclination that is hard-wired into both genders in ways that go beyond sex, romance, or fidelity. When it comes specifically to cheating, though, the primary catalyst often comes back to passion and how it’s being channeled.

Cheating and being cheated on often comes with many hard lessons, some of which leave deeper scars than others. Whether you’re a romantic like me, a jaded heart with cynical views on love, or believe that human beings aren’t meant to just love one person for the rest of their lives, the betrayal and dishonesty associated with cheating still hurts us. If nothing else, it’s a harsh reminder of how deep our passions run.

If there’s a lesson that both genders can and should learn from the pain of cheating, it’s the importance of understanding and channeling those passions. When two people share the kind of passion that keeps their love, sex, and relationship strong, then there’s no reason for either of them to cheat. It’s not easy sharing that kind of passion, but the fact we risk the pain of being cheated on shows it’s a risk worth taking.

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August 21, 2017 · 6:54 am

Why Do We Choose The Wrong Lovers?

We’ve all either seen it from afar, experienced it ourselves, or know someone who has. It’s one of the few narratives that plays out as often in real life as it does in fiction, including the sexy novels I write.

We seek out love and connection, putting a sizable chunk of our time and energy into finding that perfect lover. It’s the basis of almost every iconic love story ever made, from Shakespeare to “Titanic” to almost every Disney movie ever made. It’s also the basis of family, elaborate social connections, and the entire wedding industry. By every measure, finding that special someone is a big freakin’ deal for us.

If it’s such a big deal, though, then why do we do such a lousy job of actually choosing our lovers? I don’t ask that question out of cynicism. I ask it with a straight face, a sober mind, and a never-ending need to understand romance so I can write sexier, more romantic novels.

I know that’s somewhat self-serving, but every question involving love and sex has major implications far beyond those of aspiring erotica/romance writers. In that context, the actual process of choosing a lover is one of the most important choices we can ever make in our personal lives. It’s right up there with choosing your smartphone or your internet speeds. So why is it that we do such a lousy job in making such a critical choice?

I’m not just referring to the frustrating divorce rate among married couples, although that is a sign. I’m also not referring to the documented fact that the average number of sexual partners a person has in their lifetime is not one or less, although that also is a sign.

We humans seem to understand the importance and value of love, sex, and intimacy. However, we do a piss poor job when it comes to actually making decisions about it. Good girls will fall in love with bad boys. Good men will fall in love with bitchy girls. Good, decent people will try to love one another, but for all the wrong reasons and not realize it for years.

It’s both tragic and unsexy. People want to love each other, but can’t seem to pick up on the right signs. Even if they’re not looking for love and just want sex, they still find a way to screw that up too, as evidenced by the orgasm gap.

I even have some personal experience with this myself. Without getting into too great a detail, I was once involved with a cute, sweet, yet naturally sexy young woman in college. She and I met through our mutual love of comics and she was, in many ways, my first serious relationship. I won’t deny that I actually did feel love for her.

However, the longer we were together, the more I noticed on some fairly telling signs that were hard to ignore. She and I may have had a lot in common, but we had very different personality types. She was one way. I was another. We were rarely on the same page and it did cause plenty of stress.

Being drunk on love, I sure as hell didn’t notice it. My parents did, though, and they weren’t afraid to tell me. They know me too damn well and love me enough to discourage me from making foolish decisions. Were it not for them, I probably would’ve cut my face off the first time I tried to shave.

I credit them more than anyone for keeping me anchored, with respect to my emotions. I admit I kind of resisted their insight and made my share of excuses. In the end, they turned out to be right. My girlfriend and I broke up. It hurt, but I can’t say it was entirely surprising.

The fact that I, a guy who writes and reads a lot about sex and romance, can be so blinded by the feeling should be as clear a sign. It shows that we, as a species, aren’t very good at making wise choices when it comes to our love lives. Why is that, though?

That’s a hard question to answer and I’m certainly not going to claim to be a definitive authority on that. It’s so hard to answer that you can kind of understand why marrying for love is such a novel concept and why it was actually discouraged throughout history. Even so, it’s still a question worth contemplating, if only to refine our understanding.

I feel as though being an erotica/romance writer gives me a certain insight into this issue. I won’t say I’m the best equipped to confront it, but I do think I can bring something to the conversation. So in the interest of furthering that conversation, here are my explanations/speculations on why we choose the wrong lovers.

Reason #1: We Commit And Promise For Misguided Reasons

When most people talk about being with someone for the wrong reasons, they almost immediately conjure images of the kind of big-titted, gold-digging skank whose sole purpose in life is to inherit money from a horny old guy. Thanks to Anna Nicole Smith, that sentiment is not wholly inaccurate.

However, I’m not just talking about the gold digging angle here. That’s actually a tiny part of this reason. When I talk about being with someone for wrong or misguided reasons, I’m referring to the mental and emotional gymnastics that people do to justify the status of an inherently flawed relationship.

We’ve all heard a variation of those excuses. It usually takes a pretty bloated excuse bank to begin with, but it often manifests in fairly familiar, sometimes distressing sort of ways. It often ends with statements like this.

  • “Things will settle down after we get married.”

  • “Things will settle down after we have children.”

  • “I don’t think I can handle being alone right now.”

  • “I need someone like him/her in my life.”

  • “We’ve been together for a long time so we might as well get married.”

Each one of these statements probably makes sense to the person saying them. However, a lot of weird things make sense when you’re in love or you think you’re in love. That’s why falling in love is often described as being intoxicated. You don’t always make good decisions when you’re drunk. The same applies to when you’re in love.

Reason #2: We Have False Or Misguided Ideas Of Who We Should Be With

This reason is a big less convoluted than the first. We’ve either known someone who has made horrible choices in their love lives or we’ve been that someone. A lot of those choices stem from having a skewed or erratic criteria for who should be our lover. Some people don’t even stop to examine that criteria and it only becomes painfully clear after the relationship fails.

This is actually something that plays out in one of my books, specifically “Skin Deep.” Early in the story, Mary Williams is the hot girl that every guy wants to be with. Not surprisingly, she ends up with a star basketball player named Zach Crenshaw. It’s the classic hot girl and male athlete hook-up that we’ve seen play out every movie inspired by “Varsity Blues.”

Initially, she doesn’t really give much thought to why she’s with him. As the story plays out, though, Mary realizes that she was with Zach because she thought she was supposed to be with him. There was this indirect assumption that because she’s the hot girl, she should be with someone like Zach.

That misguided idea becomes part of the many conflicts that play out in “Skin Deep.” It also plays out in real life with people seeking certain types because they think they’re supposed to. Sometimes it’s peer pressure. Sometimes the pressure comes from culture or religion. It’s hard to actually acknowledge these pressures until after a relationship ends, but they all work to skew our emotions in certain directions.

It’s also part of why good girls fall for bad boys and good boys fall for bad girls. We have a false impression of why we’re with these people. We may call it love, but sometimes it’s something as simple as the adrenaline rush we feel when we’re with someone who might crash a motorcycle into septic tank on a bar bet.

Granted, that can be a good time that results in some pretty hot sex, but that’s not love, nor is it the foundation for a meaningful relationships.

Reason #3: We Underestimate AND Overestimate Our Ability To Love Someone

This one is a bit more subtle and self-reflective, compared to the other reasons on this list. Some of it has to do with our eagerness to love someone outstripping our ability. That does happen a lot with people who try their best to make a failing relationship work. Sometimes they succeed. Most of the time, though, it just delays the inevitable.

A better manifestation of this concept plays out in nearly every wedding ceremony, but not in the way you might think. A man or woman at their wedding is so overwhelmed by emotion and passion that it’s easy to love someone and imagine loving them until your dying days. That moment, and everything surrounding it, makes it seem so easy.

However, it’s all the days after that wedding ceremony that someone really has to worry about. A person is usually at their best on their wedding day. It’s only when we deal with someone when they’re having a really bad day that we understand the breadth of our love for them.

It’s when things go wrong that the strength of a relationship, or lack thereof, really shows. It’s in those moments when we realize that we don’t love this person nearly enough to deal directly with these issues. It’s also in these moments when we realize that we may love this person too much because their issues become hugely detrimental to our own.

Our capacity for love varies from person to person. It even varies from situation to situation. The key is finding a person whose capacity for love is similar to our own and who knows how to deal with those situations. That’s how some people can stay in love for half-a-century while others leave a trail of failed relationships wherever they go.

It’s like an extension of the laws of entropy. When you’re not on the same page as your lover, things just tend to fall apart in the long run. It’s only when you and your lover truly complement each other that it grows stronger over time. We see it in in real life and in the occasional X-men comic. It’s a perspective worth heeding.

Reason #4: We Fail To Know Ourselves Or Our Lovers Well Enough

This is basically the ultimate manifestation of not seeing the forest from the trees with respect to your love life or yourself. It also happens to be the reason that is almost impossible to realize until after it’s too late. You’re not going to see it on the first night you have sex or on your wedding day. It’s only going to become clear after the damage has been done.

This often happens with couples who marry young and divorce quickly. I actually know a few people who have endured this. One of them described it as akin to getting blackout drunk for seven years, waking up in a strange new city, and almost dying on the spot from sheer shock. In this person’s defense, he married someone who just wanted kids and that’s it. The lack of love or meaningful connection was an afterthought.

It’s somewhat tragic, but understandable to a certain extent. Some people really don’t know themselves as well as they think. Some are just really good at lying to themselves about the kind of person they are. We see it frequently in alcoholics and people with poor impulse control. They never think too much about a situation or themselves, never realizing their mistake until it’s too late.

The best illustration of this comes from another friend of mine who went through a nasty divorce early in life, but met the love of his life and has been happily married for decades. He told me outright that he and his first wife really didn’t know each other that well. They knew enough to want to hook up and that was it. It wasn’t until after they divorced that it became painfully obvious why they were wrong for each other.

Then, he met his future wife and he knows pretty much everything about her. He can tell me how she takes her coffee, what her favorite movie is, and what she throws at the TV whenever a referee calls a bad penalty during a football game. He and his wife know each other so well and not just with respect to their anatomy. It’s that knowledge and understanding that helps make their relationship so strong.

Sometimes, we get ahead of ourselves in wanting to be with someone. We love them before we truly know them and marry them before we’re ready. It creates a lot of complications for ourselves and our lovers, some of which become ticking time bombs in a relationship that can sometimes go off in the worst of ways.

Reason #5: We Fail To Understand That Love (And Sex) Is An Ongoing Process

I look at this reason the same way I look at foreplay. For one, I am totally in favor foreplay. It is one of the best parts of sex. It helps turn what is already an inherently intimate experience into something more awesome.

Sex without foreplay is still sex. It still can have the same end result, preferably a mutual orgasm. However, the process behind it, namely the foreplay, is what makes it meaningful. It’s that process that tends to get overlooked in both sex and love.

It happens with marriages that grow stale. It happens with relationships that burn out quickly. Those involved eventually stop putting work into the process of love and sex. Some think that the work is done when they get married or after they start having sex. They see that as an endpoint. It’s not. That’s just the beginning of a new process.

I’ve learned this in my own personal life. I’ve seen it play out with friend and family as their relationships evolve. Seeing love and sex as an endpoint is usually setting yourself up for disappointment, heartbreak, and a lack of quality orgasms. Emotions don’t end until we’re dead. Treating them otherwise will just turn us into the Bundy family.

Now, that’s not to say that the process always gets harder and more tedious over time. That only applies to relationships that are flawed or doomed from the start. Ideally, the process gets smoother over time if you’re with someone that you love for all the right reasons.

You shouldn’t have to do quantum physics to keep being with someone. Just being yourself, always trying to improve along the way, should be sufficient and complementary to the efforts of your lover. It’s a process that never ends, but is always rewarding if done right.

Once again, I want to emphasize that I am not an authority on love. I just write a lot about it and try to tell sexy stories. This is just my way of exploring this question that doesn’t get enough scrutiny, in my opinion.

If anyone has any insight that they would like to add, please let me know in the comments. I’d love to turn this into a larger conversation about the poor and not-so-poor decisions we make about our live lives. Until the day comes when super-intelligent machines can make those decisions for us, which may eventually happen, this is an issue that we’ll continue to struggle with.

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August 16, 2017 · 6:34 am

Do Prenups Help (Or Hurt) Marriages?

Whenever we hedge our bets on something, be it a major life decision or a poker game, it’s often a tacit admission that we may fail and more often than not, that’s the first step towards failure. Being careful or proactive doesn’t give the impression that you’re all that confident. A lack of confidence is also not very sexy either so some people may not be inclined to be that careful.

Granted, there are some bets we don’t mind hedging on. Why else would we buy insurance or demand that our heart surgeons be licensed? It doesn’t matter how confident you might be. There’s nothing sexy about getting heart surgery from the medical equivalent of a drunk plumber.

We, as a society, are somewhat erratic about the things we should and shouldn’t hedge our bets on. There’s a constant push and pull between being proactive and being bold. We want to sound confident, but we also don’t want to risk crashing a drag racer into a hill just to get laid.

With that in mind, here’s a simple questions that we’ve all probably asked ourselves, albeit indirectly. Just how proactive should we be when it comes to our love lives? I’m not talking about avoiding parents or wearing condoms either. Specifically, I’m talking about marriage and how we approach it. Even more specifically, I’m talking about prenuptial agreements.

It’s somewhat telling that most people don’t know much about these fairly mundane, legally-binding contracts that have been around for decades. They’re not complex financial laws or esoteric provisions of the tax code. A prenup is a simple, legal way to ensure that if a marriage fails, the hard, heartbreaking work is already done.

According to FindLaw.com, the simplest purpose of a prenuptial agreement is to “establish the property and financial rights of each spouse in the event of a divorce.” If children are involved, it can resolve that too. Again, it’s like doing the hardest work ahead of time, just in case it becomes necessary. In terms of being proactive with your love life, it’s both prudent and practical.

It also has an unspoken, but distinct stigma to it and for entirely understandable reasons. The mere act of considering a prenup for your marriage implies that you think it’s possible it may fail. When you’re young, in love, and still having great sex, who wants to think that? Hell, if your lover even joked about it, what would that reveal about your relationship?

It’s a distressing thought. That’s why prenups are usually associated with rich people and famous celebrities. In fact, the provisions of some of these prenups seem downright insane to non-famous, non-eccentric people. That may be why prenups have a somewhat mixed reputations.

However, celebrities and the super rich have a lot more to lose than their hearts in a marriage. It’s understandable that they’d be more proactive than most. Unfortunately, it also means that celebrities are more than twice as likely to divorce. That may be another part of why prenups have a bad reputation. They’re loosely correlated with more divorce.

That brings me back to the title of this article and the obvious question that too few people ask. Do prenuptial agreements help a marriage or are they detrimental in the long run? Based on what I’ve just explained about the mentality behind prenups, the answer would seem obvious. That’s just it, though. We really don’t know.

At the moment, we’re still clinging to the mentality that if you want a prenup, then you’re setting your marriage up for failure. That’s a dangerous, not to mention short-sighted understanding of marriage and relationships. While there is some research to hint that having a prenup doesn’t increase your chances of divorce, there’s very little information on what this means for the health of a relationship, as a whole.

At the same time, we constantly hear the whining from the family values crowd about the declining rates of marriage. It’s not at all unfounded, either. Fewer and fewer people are getting married, especially among younger people. There are many potential reasons for this, but there’s one in particular that I want to focus on, as it relates to prenups.

I’ve talked about it before, albeit in part. This time, I want to be a bit more blunt. To all those worried about declining marriage rates, increasing divorce rates, and young people humping without consequence, I have an important message that needs to be belabored.

If you’re a man, marriage for is a TERRIBLE deal.

I know it sounds like I’m just echoing timeless words of Al Bundy, but bear with me. In order to show just how bad a deal marriage is for men, allow me to paint a scenario. It’s not a thought experiment because this is, for all intents in purposes, how it plays out in the real world.

You and your lawyer are sitting across the table from a potential partner and their lawyer. Their lawyer presents you a partnership contract. In that contract, it says that you are to only ever conduct personal business with them until the day you die. If, however, the other party decides to dissolve the contract at any time and for any reason, then they get half of your assets, by default. If you happen have any children, the partner very likely take sole custody of them, as well. Would you sign that contract?

Most people, if they looked at the fine print in that scenario, wouldn’t sign that contract, even on a dare or while drunk. It’s a horribly unequal contract. It effectively asks the man to go against his own interests. It also gives the woman a distressing amount of incentive to end the marriage. When there’s a financial incentive to do anything, it usually skews the odds. Marriage is no different.

This scenario also reflects the impact that “no-fault divorce” has had on marriage in recent decades. That’s a fairly recent development, as well. Instead of needing a reason to dissolve a marriage, it can be done on a whim and the man, who may not have even done anything wrong, gets screwed over. In that context, the decline in marriage is entirely understandable.

It should also explain why men are so reluctant to get married in the first place these days. The incentives aren’t just awful. It creates a legally-binding inequality within a relationship. In both marriage and divorce, the woman has the benefit when it comes to custody of children and alimony payments. Even so, a man who is reluctant to marry is seen as someone who doesn’t love his significant other as much as he should.

This brings me back to prenuptial agreements. As it stands, only five percent of divorces occur in couples who had a prenup and only three percent of couples planning to get married have a prenup. While the number of marriages that have prenups are increasing, it’s still not that common and there’s still a stigma to it.

So what would happen if every marriage from here on out required a prenuptial agreement? Moreover, what would happen if the structure of the marriage made the responsibilities between the man and the woman equal? It’s an honest, sincere question because, as an aspiring erotica/romance writer, I’m all for love. I’m all for marriage. I too would like to get married one day.

However, marriage in its current state doesn’t just scare me. It seems downright unsexy. It almost seems to take advantage of men who are so hopelessly in love that they don’t think about what will happen if something goes wrong . Granted, no man wants to think about that, especially when they’re in love, but it can cause a lot of pain and heartache down the line.

I’m not saying prenuptial agreements will fix the current state of marriage or gender dynamics between men and women. However, I do think that we’re straining our ability to love each other when our relationships are so inherently unequal. I’ve championed love between equals in the past. I think that’s the kind of love that will improve our love lives, our sexy lives, and our marriages in the future.

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