Married to the Snob

                                All men be like this...                                                    But all women be like this.

Matt Walsh (not the one of UCB fame, so really why the hell do I even care) recently wrote a blog about how single dudes need to "grow up" and "get serious" and stop "hanging out" and "hooking up." Obviously I invite you to go and read the blog, but if you don't want to, I'm happy to offer my very own impression of this blog:

"Ahem ahem, as someone who unquestioningly accepts the gender stereotypes and norms passed down from previous generations, I feel that my having gotten married means that I am more mature than other people and am justified in condescendingly lumping all single women together as a group, defining their desires, and then telling all single men how they ought to behave in order to match up to all single women. Trust me, because I got married and bought a laptop, so I should know."

My dear Married Asshat, I have married friends who are immature. I have single friends who are not. I know girls who want to get married to the next guy they date, I know girls who never want to get married at all. I know people who view sex as a serious emotional endeavor, and I know people who view it as a great way to connect with someone and get some exercise in the deal. And I don't judge them all by my standard of success.

You know what the great and terrible thing is about men and women? There are a lot of them, and there are guys who want to live out traditional marriages just as there are girls who do. And they can find each other. And there are guys who want to "hook up" and "hang out" and there are girls who do. And they can find each other too. People benefit not from "getting serious," they benefit from honestly communicating what they're looking for and what they'd be happy with, and then trying to find someone who is in roughly the same boat-- not by trying to change everyone to fit by their standards of success.

Here are some other things I know. I know that the divorce rate today is around 40-50%. I know that 10–15% of women and 20–25% of men *admitted* to having engaged in extramarital sex (and this was from a 90's study, I'm betting it's higher today). I also know that women weren't given the vote till 1920, and talking about the good old days of marriage is like talking about the good old days of governmental accountability or the good old days before the church sex scandals. The fact that you know more about other people's business today than you did throughout history is a testament to the power of the internet, not a testament to how innocent the good'ole days were. If you want to dress up the past as a pastoral antediluvian eden, a myth that is really only accepted by children and those who are so lazy they can't even be bothered to type in "history of marriage" into google or spend 10 minutes reading wikipedia, you can go ahead and do that but don't expect anyone with an internet connection and brain to come along for the ride.