Secular Koranism would have government-run marriage bureaus so that local girls can marry local boys after looking up their possibly criminal history. There will be marriageability checks and classes for those who seek this.
Really not trying to doom here, but the idea that I might find a woman who is sane and sensible, emotionally stable and mature, I enjoy being around, is reliable, and I can respect and admire, is so laughable... I might as well play the lottery every day hoping I win and can retire.
Some of these women exist, but they are all married - and married young.
For my wife and I, it is our third wedding anniversary today. It still feels like 'just the beginning'. I won't leave a long comment, but suffice to say: you nailed it (& it's very useful to see these lessons put into words).
It’s odd how this topic is almost never discussed. Oversight I suppose. Great article, as they say “happy wife, happy life”. Makes a difference between a life of stress and one of success.
Ruddy good text I must say! Solid down-to-earth advise, no preaching, no "didactisms" (if that term works in English?), no finger of scorn or the scourge of nihilistic relativism. Jolly encouraging I say!
And I say that as a man married to the same woman since 1994.
"I want to clarify that you are not “entitled” to have high expectations of women if you are a mess of a man."
Absolutely true - the attitude that one is somehow owed love, relationship, or sex is corrosive to the spirit and the worst kind of self-replicating negative cope-spiral. I'd drop the scare-quotes around entitled, but that's me being nitpicky (and I'm not me if I can't let my inner nitpicker out once in a while).
If I was to ride the coat-tails of your text, it'd be by adding this:
"Expect conflicts. View these not as flaws in the relationship, but as something that you work to solve mutually. Be on the lookout for the difference between conflict over practical matters, and conflict stemming from unhealth, unhappiness and other emotional sources. Being angry at each other and having a row over who displaced the tiger-saw or who forgot to lock up the chickens for the night is normal and natural, as long as you both see the conflict as a mutual thing to solve amicably."
Grand-Dad and Grand-Ma were married for over sixty years. I well remember then arguing or fighting (verbally) over trifling matters. Eventually, Grand-Dad would go out in the garage or woodshed and work it off, and Grand-Ma would do the same in the kitchen, and then they'd solve the problem once emotions had quieted a bit.
I think perhaps the generations born from ca 1970-1975ish and onwards have been indictrinated into thinking conflict means the relationship is bad or flawed or wrong, and instead of thinking in a manner constructive to the source of the conflict, they react in a manner emotional instead, which solves nothing.
Oh, and the bit about hobbies and job/career-stuff: absolutely-tootely true. I used to paint WH40k minis - you can imagine the total lack of interest from the wife in the difference between a Rainbow Warrior-Space Marine and a Blood Drinker-Space Marine. She sews, knits, makes clothing and costumes and whatnot for fun - my eyes glaze over when she starts describing the umpty-zillion ways to make a skirt.
LOL, Woes – it will be a laugh to keep this and look back on it after you have been married for 25 years – see how well it stood the test of time. Especially the part about lust. How long do you think that lasts? What about when her tits are sagging to the knees, and probably the belly too? Not to mention YOUR tits and belly?
That was an interesting part of the essay. I doubt that phase lasts very long for most couples, and I don't think it's quite as important as all that. Good luck to those who are luckier in that department. But once children come along and the privacy goes, things certainly change. Most of us, when children ourselves, upon discovering the origin of new life, will have had that conversation where you calculate the number of times the parents copulated by how many children they have! Perhaps the general absence of sex in most family homes plays in to this seemingly naive view?!
Good article and sound advice overall. Something which I think has been lost in our modern age is that marriage is not just a union of two people, but a blending of two families. Before the current atomisation, people didn't disappear to the four corners of the nation for the sake of work or whatever, so in addition to spending a lot of time around each other, spouses spent a lot of time around each other's families. I think this will become more and more relevant as material circumstances worsen across the West, and we are forced to rely on our families more.
This can cause friction, as with the stereotypical nagging in-laws, but it can also help or even overcome some of the red flags you highlighted. For example, my wife and I are both introverted homebodies, and we reinforce each other's antisocial tendencies. Her extended family are very closely knit and live nearby, however, and they have frequent social gatherings which they do not let us wriggle out of.
Is it annoying? Sometimes. But it's also what's best for both of us, and it's not something we would get solely from each other.
Not your typical Millennial Woes article, but a good one. There’s nothing I can really disagree with and I feel the sting from having not known these when I was younger and having to learn them the hard way.
What are people's thoughts on tattoos? I'm old-fashioned enough to consider them a red flag, but it seems they're so common nowadays, you have to either accept them or drastically reduce your pool of potential partners.
(Take this with salt though, I was out of the dating-pool in '93.)
If you can read the code, so to speak, it's not a problem. If you can't you're SOL I'm afraid.
Sadly, learning the code means living the life in the repsective sub-cultures and learning by doing - there's no longer any quick-and-easy "If she's got a cobweb tatted on her elbow she's such-and-such" kind of rules.
The quality of the tat is usually a very general indicator: expensive high-quality and tasteful in pacing and make-up means the lady sporting it likely is of a more stable nature.
Home-made needle from an old electric razor, smudged and poorly placed with no artistic/aesthetic merit means that it's likely the wearer matches the tat.
Heck, people now will tat their faces and necks and hands, and will use prison-tats as if those are some chique decoration. Talk about buying trouble!
'At the practical level, a relationship is the story of two people confronting together a thousand little problems (and maybe ten big problems). ' - such a great way to put it!
Will have been married ten years as of this month! I think one of the most important things if not the most important thing in addition to everything you listed is that you share the same views on the nature of marriage… neither of us believes in divorce, and this is a strong belief, so we just won’t get one. It’s an important discussion to have before you get married.
Also it’s worth noting that if you come from divorced parents and your spouse does as well your chances of divorce increase something like 300%.
This operator's manual checks out. I'll admit that I gritted my teeth a little bit at the topic, but when you started with raw attraction and sex, I knew that you knew what you were talking about.
A good spouse should make you constantly inspired and want to always have her by your side to just cram in as many experiences that you can have together before the lights go out. I just have this constant need to impress mine, and it spurs me do things that I otherwise wouldn't. It also adds a tenacity to everything that I do. I give up on things much less easily, because they matter more when you have somebody that you are fighting for, and with. You will become more emphatic in saying "no" to things that you don't want in your life. This is the "grouchy old man" matrix. Embrace it for what it is.
I would lean more into having things in common as being important. You don't have to start with things in common, but you must find some. This is also known as "being interesting", which is a critical. If a woman picks up on zero well intentioned suggestions, and always does her own thing, that's a red flag. Women are far more social, so getting to appreciate at least a few of her better TV shows or whatever, for the purely whimsical social interractions is important. There are some good "shitty TV shows" in the "White Lotus" or "Below Deck" tiers that I actually enjoy. Women basically require this sort of thing to live, so don't fight it too hard.
You should at least try hard to have shared musical interests. Singing songs together with your loved one is one of the absolute greatest joys in life. Its simple, timeless and unabashed.
I might also say, that you will have to basically nuke your old friends when you have a true spouse. There just isn't really room for a big social group and the old social life, its just too many obligations. I've seldom seen it go any other way, especially with children. This isn't a bad thing, a man shoud be able to walk life alone, at times. Most likely your old childhood friends are holding you back a little by mid-life, anyways.
Thanks again for a great article (I have a few of yours I still need to catch up with)
I've long wondered what your views might be on the manosphere and the associated incel and "red pill"/"black pill" culture, which seems to have caused something of a moral panic in recent years, and has led to the creation of shows like Adolescence and concerns over "radicalisation" (which is effectively a synonym for "wrongthink": ideas that fall outside a state-approved paradigm)
Obviously there are aspects of the manosphere that are completely awful, and Andrew Tate is a ridiculously exaggerated caricature of masculinity that no-one should aspire to emulate
At the same time, not everything that is being said in the manosphere is factually incorrect either, and there are well-understood biological and evolutionary foundations for various aspects of human sexual behaviour which should not be dismissed in favour of a kind of egalitarian "sexual Marxism" in which hierarchies are denied altogether, and phrases like "high value male" are openly sneered at
I would also suggest that even though the Left are very keen to point the finger at the manosphere, "toxic masculinity" and suchlike, these are symptoms rather than the root cause of the problem: I'd suggest that dating apps, social media and porn are the true terrible trio, coupled with the malign influence of fourth-wave feminism
You are absolutely correct to point out that young men especially should seek to maximise everything that they can be, and this is where I feel that you are tapping into some manosphere ideas: I wish I had understood this principle better when I was younger, but the information simply wasn't available to the same extent back in the 2000s
I'm almost 40 years old, both single and childless, and I've only had two serious relationships in my life that lasted more than just a few months: everything else was short-term and very fleeting
The two women who I did date for a significant amount of time actually did share common interests with me, and the others didn't particularly have as much
Overall though, with a handful of exceptions, women in general have been a massive disappointment to me, and I think it is a truism that as you age, you simply become more jaded, cynical and disillusioned about these things
Who wants to be burnt-out on Bumble pushing 40 and having inane conversations with a small handful of matches that go absolutely nowhere? Unfortunately, that's the reality of the dating world today, and I can assure you that I have absolutely no plans to visit Thailand anytime in the near future
I nailed a French psychiatrist on my first trip to Thailand, and conceived my first son on the second. I highly recommend going there, its loaded with hot travelling White women.
I was pursuing a very proper English girl, followed her to Koh Tau, and learned how dive for weeks there, something I'd never have done if I wasn't chasing this woman. The pusrsuit itself forced me to live, and I really enjoyed it. She was a dive instructor. You need to have the mindset that the right girl for you is out there, and then just...get out there! It WILL happen!
I'd consider looking into getting a Ukrainian right now, personally. Surely there are millions that are looking for a spouse to get away from the war... a veritable bonanza of Poon!
I think the most difficult thing for me is determining at what point am i
a) not feeling comfortable around her because of incompatibility
or
b) not feeling comfortable because we dont know each other well enough
Secular Koranism would have government-run marriage bureaus so that local girls can marry local boys after looking up their possibly criminal history. There will be marriageability checks and classes for those who seek this.
https://secularkoranism.blogspot.com/2025/03/secular-kornaism-marriage-bureau.html
For those already cohabiting, https://secularkoranism.blogspot.com/2025/03/secular-koranism-pamphlet-on-concubine.html is the solution.
Woesy...you are one talented philosophical dude. Thank you.
I forwarded this article to my daughter.
Really not trying to doom here, but the idea that I might find a woman who is sane and sensible, emotionally stable and mature, I enjoy being around, is reliable, and I can respect and admire, is so laughable... I might as well play the lottery every day hoping I win and can retire.
Some of these women exist, but they are all married - and married young.
For my wife and I, it is our third wedding anniversary today. It still feels like 'just the beginning'. I won't leave a long comment, but suffice to say: you nailed it (& it's very useful to see these lessons put into words).
It’s odd how this topic is almost never discussed. Oversight I suppose. Great article, as they say “happy wife, happy life”. Makes a difference between a life of stress and one of success.
Ruddy good text I must say! Solid down-to-earth advise, no preaching, no "didactisms" (if that term works in English?), no finger of scorn or the scourge of nihilistic relativism. Jolly encouraging I say!
And I say that as a man married to the same woman since 1994.
"I want to clarify that you are not “entitled” to have high expectations of women if you are a mess of a man."
Absolutely true - the attitude that one is somehow owed love, relationship, or sex is corrosive to the spirit and the worst kind of self-replicating negative cope-spiral. I'd drop the scare-quotes around entitled, but that's me being nitpicky (and I'm not me if I can't let my inner nitpicker out once in a while).
If I was to ride the coat-tails of your text, it'd be by adding this:
"Expect conflicts. View these not as flaws in the relationship, but as something that you work to solve mutually. Be on the lookout for the difference between conflict over practical matters, and conflict stemming from unhealth, unhappiness and other emotional sources. Being angry at each other and having a row over who displaced the tiger-saw or who forgot to lock up the chickens for the night is normal and natural, as long as you both see the conflict as a mutual thing to solve amicably."
Grand-Dad and Grand-Ma were married for over sixty years. I well remember then arguing or fighting (verbally) over trifling matters. Eventually, Grand-Dad would go out in the garage or woodshed and work it off, and Grand-Ma would do the same in the kitchen, and then they'd solve the problem once emotions had quieted a bit.
I think perhaps the generations born from ca 1970-1975ish and onwards have been indictrinated into thinking conflict means the relationship is bad or flawed or wrong, and instead of thinking in a manner constructive to the source of the conflict, they react in a manner emotional instead, which solves nothing.
Oh, and the bit about hobbies and job/career-stuff: absolutely-tootely true. I used to paint WH40k minis - you can imagine the total lack of interest from the wife in the difference between a Rainbow Warrior-Space Marine and a Blood Drinker-Space Marine. She sews, knits, makes clothing and costumes and whatnot for fun - my eyes glaze over when she starts describing the umpty-zillion ways to make a skirt.
Again, really good writing!
The older I get, the more I value peace. A peaceful home. Keeping drama and conflict to a minimum.
Red flags
1) If she has some form of depression, be careful. It will bring you down too, even if you think you're immune to it.
2) Complaining about trivial things. It's annoying, and shows a lack of perspective for the larger problems in the world.
LOL, Woes – it will be a laugh to keep this and look back on it after you have been married for 25 years – see how well it stood the test of time. Especially the part about lust. How long do you think that lasts? What about when her tits are sagging to the knees, and probably the belly too? Not to mention YOUR tits and belly?
That was an interesting part of the essay. I doubt that phase lasts very long for most couples, and I don't think it's quite as important as all that. Good luck to those who are luckier in that department. But once children come along and the privacy goes, things certainly change. Most of us, when children ourselves, upon discovering the origin of new life, will have had that conversation where you calculate the number of times the parents copulated by how many children they have! Perhaps the general absence of sex in most family homes plays in to this seemingly naive view?!
Yeah, I was thinking this. Raw sexual attraction beyond your 30's?
Good article and sound advice overall. Something which I think has been lost in our modern age is that marriage is not just a union of two people, but a blending of two families. Before the current atomisation, people didn't disappear to the four corners of the nation for the sake of work or whatever, so in addition to spending a lot of time around each other, spouses spent a lot of time around each other's families. I think this will become more and more relevant as material circumstances worsen across the West, and we are forced to rely on our families more.
This can cause friction, as with the stereotypical nagging in-laws, but it can also help or even overcome some of the red flags you highlighted. For example, my wife and I are both introverted homebodies, and we reinforce each other's antisocial tendencies. Her extended family are very closely knit and live nearby, however, and they have frequent social gatherings which they do not let us wriggle out of.
Is it annoying? Sometimes. But it's also what's best for both of us, and it's not something we would get solely from each other.
Not your typical Millennial Woes article, but a good one. There’s nothing I can really disagree with and I feel the sting from having not known these when I was younger and having to learn them the hard way.
Very good article, thanks.
What are people's thoughts on tattoos? I'm old-fashioned enough to consider them a red flag, but it seems they're so common nowadays, you have to either accept them or drastically reduce your pool of potential partners.
Depends.
(Take this with salt though, I was out of the dating-pool in '93.)
If you can read the code, so to speak, it's not a problem. If you can't you're SOL I'm afraid.
Sadly, learning the code means living the life in the repsective sub-cultures and learning by doing - there's no longer any quick-and-easy "If she's got a cobweb tatted on her elbow she's such-and-such" kind of rules.
The quality of the tat is usually a very general indicator: expensive high-quality and tasteful in pacing and make-up means the lady sporting it likely is of a more stable nature.
Home-made needle from an old electric razor, smudged and poorly placed with no artistic/aesthetic merit means that it's likely the wearer matches the tat.
Heck, people now will tat their faces and necks and hands, and will use prison-tats as if those are some chique decoration. Talk about buying trouble!
I don’t like it but I think maybe it’s a modern / online obsession that may not really matter that much. I’d view it on a case by case basis.
Not a fan either, but I’m >50!
I would say, if it’s really a dealbreaker for you, then don’t compromise and regret it later.
There are about 4bn women out there - there must be (more than) one that’s right for you among them.
'At the practical level, a relationship is the story of two people confronting together a thousand little problems (and maybe ten big problems). ' - such a great way to put it!
Will have been married ten years as of this month! I think one of the most important things if not the most important thing in addition to everything you listed is that you share the same views on the nature of marriage… neither of us believes in divorce, and this is a strong belief, so we just won’t get one. It’s an important discussion to have before you get married.
Also it’s worth noting that if you come from divorced parents and your spouse does as well your chances of divorce increase something like 300%.
This operator's manual checks out. I'll admit that I gritted my teeth a little bit at the topic, but when you started with raw attraction and sex, I knew that you knew what you were talking about.
A good spouse should make you constantly inspired and want to always have her by your side to just cram in as many experiences that you can have together before the lights go out. I just have this constant need to impress mine, and it spurs me do things that I otherwise wouldn't. It also adds a tenacity to everything that I do. I give up on things much less easily, because they matter more when you have somebody that you are fighting for, and with. You will become more emphatic in saying "no" to things that you don't want in your life. This is the "grouchy old man" matrix. Embrace it for what it is.
I would lean more into having things in common as being important. You don't have to start with things in common, but you must find some. This is also known as "being interesting", which is a critical. If a woman picks up on zero well intentioned suggestions, and always does her own thing, that's a red flag. Women are far more social, so getting to appreciate at least a few of her better TV shows or whatever, for the purely whimsical social interractions is important. There are some good "shitty TV shows" in the "White Lotus" or "Below Deck" tiers that I actually enjoy. Women basically require this sort of thing to live, so don't fight it too hard.
You should at least try hard to have shared musical interests. Singing songs together with your loved one is one of the absolute greatest joys in life. Its simple, timeless and unabashed.
I might also say, that you will have to basically nuke your old friends when you have a true spouse. There just isn't really room for a big social group and the old social life, its just too many obligations. I've seldom seen it go any other way, especially with children. This isn't a bad thing, a man shoud be able to walk life alone, at times. Most likely your old childhood friends are holding you back a little by mid-life, anyways.
Thanks again for a great article (I have a few of yours I still need to catch up with)
I've long wondered what your views might be on the manosphere and the associated incel and "red pill"/"black pill" culture, which seems to have caused something of a moral panic in recent years, and has led to the creation of shows like Adolescence and concerns over "radicalisation" (which is effectively a synonym for "wrongthink": ideas that fall outside a state-approved paradigm)
Obviously there are aspects of the manosphere that are completely awful, and Andrew Tate is a ridiculously exaggerated caricature of masculinity that no-one should aspire to emulate
At the same time, not everything that is being said in the manosphere is factually incorrect either, and there are well-understood biological and evolutionary foundations for various aspects of human sexual behaviour which should not be dismissed in favour of a kind of egalitarian "sexual Marxism" in which hierarchies are denied altogether, and phrases like "high value male" are openly sneered at
I would also suggest that even though the Left are very keen to point the finger at the manosphere, "toxic masculinity" and suchlike, these are symptoms rather than the root cause of the problem: I'd suggest that dating apps, social media and porn are the true terrible trio, coupled with the malign influence of fourth-wave feminism
You are absolutely correct to point out that young men especially should seek to maximise everything that they can be, and this is where I feel that you are tapping into some manosphere ideas: I wish I had understood this principle better when I was younger, but the information simply wasn't available to the same extent back in the 2000s
I'm almost 40 years old, both single and childless, and I've only had two serious relationships in my life that lasted more than just a few months: everything else was short-term and very fleeting
The two women who I did date for a significant amount of time actually did share common interests with me, and the others didn't particularly have as much
Overall though, with a handful of exceptions, women in general have been a massive disappointment to me, and I think it is a truism that as you age, you simply become more jaded, cynical and disillusioned about these things
Who wants to be burnt-out on Bumble pushing 40 and having inane conversations with a small handful of matches that go absolutely nowhere? Unfortunately, that's the reality of the dating world today, and I can assure you that I have absolutely no plans to visit Thailand anytime in the near future
I nailed a French psychiatrist on my first trip to Thailand, and conceived my first son on the second. I highly recommend going there, its loaded with hot travelling White women.
I was pursuing a very proper English girl, followed her to Koh Tau, and learned how dive for weeks there, something I'd never have done if I wasn't chasing this woman. The pusrsuit itself forced me to live, and I really enjoyed it. She was a dive instructor. You need to have the mindset that the right girl for you is out there, and then just...get out there! It WILL happen!
I'd consider looking into getting a Ukrainian right now, personally. Surely there are millions that are looking for a spouse to get away from the war... a veritable bonanza of Poon!