8 ms·

"Marriage is for white people"

72 points by andreyf 17y ago

gcheong 17y ago
"He believes that his presence and example in the home is why both his sons decided to marry when their girlfriends became pregnant." How about just not getting girls pregnant in the first place?
andreyf 17y ago
I'm really torn between whether this is about those crazy black kids that won't get off my lawn, or the future our society is heading in... ideas?
- jibiki 17y ago
  Sorry, can someone explain why this comment has been downmodded? The original article is quite ambiguous: the author saw the decline of marriage as both bad and good (or at least practical.) This is a common attitude to hold towards change, and I don't see why pointing it out would be improper etiquette.
- sown 17y ago
  Maybe it'll be like europe some how where people seem to not get married in large numbers.
  - eru 17y ago
    And they do not get a lot of kids either. (In most parts.) Though that does not seem to correlate. Fertility in Scandinavia is relatively high for European standards, and they do not care too much about wedlock any longer.
thras 17y ago
I wouldn't worry. Whites are going down the crapper pretty fast too. Take a look at this chart: http://blog.american.com/?p=714 http://blog.american.com/?p=714 Marriage is for wealth-preservers and wealth-creators. That's not the direction that society is trending.
skwaddar 17y ago
Blacks and their slavery shoulder chip, GET OVER IT Newsflash : "more Irish were sold as slaves to the American colonies and plantations from 1651 to 1660 than the total existing “free” population of the Americas" http://www.ewtn.com/library/HUMANITY/SLAVES.TXT http://www.ewtn.com/library/HUMANITY/SLAVES.TXT http://www.scoilgaeilge.org/academics/slaves.htm http://www.scoilgaeilge.org/academics/slaves.htm From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland's population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade. Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children. Britain's solution was to auction them off as well. During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers. http://www.africaresource.com/rasta/sesostris-the-great-the-egyptian-hercules/the-irish-slave-trade-forgotten-white-slaves/ http://www.africaresource.com/rasta/sesostris-the-great-the-...
- arien 17y ago
  That's like, totally irrelevant to what the article is about. The author points out the fact that it's strange that the marriage rate was higher during slavery than in present times. It's just an observation, not a whine. The article overall is very interesting (from a woman's point of view, at least) and IMO applies to most modern women nowadays, not just black women. But the title smells of linkbait.
- emmett 17y ago
  First - great collection of links. The history of slavery deserves a more thorough understanding than what's normally taught in high school. And yet, it was not the Irish who couldn't vote as late as the 60s, nor were the Irish the ones in segregated schools through the 70s, nor were there Irish divisions of the armed forces in World War II sent on the most dangerous missions. There were not masses of Irishmen enslaved in the south (de jure, and then defacto) through the 1800s and 1900s. Are black people the only people to be oppressed and discriminated against in history? Clearly not. But as late as 4 decades ago, well within the lifetime of people still alive, black people have suffered a far greater weight of discrimination than any other ethnic group in America. The after-effects of recent black slavery and segregation continue to be felt today. Saying "get over it" suggests a lack of understanding of the ways that those effects still persist.
steveeq1 17y ago
And how does this relate to hacker news?
- kqr2 17y ago
  From the HN guidelines: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
  - asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
    The HN-worthiness of this article aside, I continue to be amazed just how quickly and how far anyone who posits the question is down voted. It's surprising how all the diverse interests here share such an extreme intolerance for this meta discussion. It's a fascinating dynamic.
    - swolchok 17y ago
      pg says it's boring. I'm increasingly inclined to agree.
- TomOfTTB 17y ago
  It’s a stretch, I’ll grant you that (I didn’t submit it). But to me this is an interesting challenge to the technology community. Having people in good marriages is a positive thing. It’s good for society (it promotes stability in a population), it’s good for individuals (who always have someone to rely on no matter how tough things get) and it’s good for children (divorced parents show up as a negative factor in every study that includes it). So people not wanting to marry is a problem. It’s already been proven that technology has the potential to correct social ills that modern society inflicts. For example, sites like eHarmony step in and use profiling for busy adults who don’t have time to hang out in bars every night looking for the right person. That in mind read this quote from the article... Among African Americans, the desire for marriage seems to have a different trajectory for women and men. My observation is that black women in their twenties and early thirties want to marry and commit at a time when black men their age are more likely to enjoy playing the field. As the woman realizes that a good marriage may not be as possible or sustainable as she would like, her focus turns to having a baby, or possibly improving her job status, perhaps by returning to school or investing more energy in her career. As men mature, and begin to recognize the benefits of having a roost and roots (and to feel the consequences of their risky bachelor behavior), they are more willing to marry and settle down. By this time, however, many of their female peers are satisfied with the lives they have constructed and are less likely to settle for marriage to a man who doesn't bring much to the table. You see, there’s a disconnect here. One technology can fix. One that should be presented to people who can fix it (namely, people who read Hacker News). Again, posting it here is a stretch but I’m not sure it’s an unacceptable one. P.S. It also might help solve problems with hacker news. Like...I wish there was a "QUOTE" tag...for example
lionhearted 17y ago
> Sex, love and childbearing have become a la carte choices rather than a package deal that comes with marriage. The American legal system right now is absolutely draconian and broken to men. A man can try to be a good father and husband, do nothing wrong except be a bit of a putz, then his wife divorces him, gets full custody of the kids, and 30-50% of his after-tax income. She receives more money if he doesn't get custody of the kids, so women who don't like a man often fight for that. So people mention prenups as a way to make sure these things are understood. Unfortunately, prenuptial agreements "that weren't fair enough" routinely get thrown out of court. If the prenup was "under duress", it gets thrown out. That includes the man saying he won't get married without the prenup - that means it was under duress and coerced, toss that sucker, split everything up. Now most guys give it a try anyway, and say, "Well, I'm different, I'm going to have a stronger relationship and do xyz and zyx and...." - and that's admirable. But a lot of people look at the courts and want nothing to do with it. Anyone who is familiar with how otherwise good and nice people act when they're given ridiculous leverage and power gets a little scared at the court system. There's other factors. But black people know this. I had the radio on yesterday, and "celebrity news" came on. A rapper named Nas - black man who was married to a black woman - is now getting divorced. One child. He's got to pay $150,000 per month in alimony and child support. Some teenager hears that on the radio, thinks it's crazy, and decides he's rather uninterested in marriage. If the laws were made less brutal, I think you'd see more people marrying, marrying at an earlier age, having more children, and paradoxically - I think the divorce rate would go down. Certainly, it'd be hard to make something worse than the current state of affairs.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  The American legal system has lots of things that are very hard to explain to foreigners. The sheer amount of case law and the jury system make for lots of income for lawyers and very little justice. Child support should be limited to what it actually costs to rear a child, not some arbitrary multiple of that.
  - pyre 17y ago
    It varies from child to child. If someone's child is in some rich boarding school, I personally think they should be allowed to continue on at that school unless it is financially infeasible for both parents to live apart and still afford it. If the 'bare minimum' of raising a child is $300/month, then I don't think they the child should necessarily be forced out of their school and into the public school system or something just _because_ that's the bare minimum. I think that these factor should be taken into account. disclaimer: I am _not_ a rich person, nor do I have any children. {edit} That said, if the monthly child-support is determined to be really high based on the child going to an expensive school, the child-support payment should be reduced if the custodial parent decides to pull the child out of that school for a cheaper one {/edit}
nopassrecover 17y ago
What is the American obsession with race? I'm sure there's a more useful explanation behind these rates (perhaps family tradition of marriage, income, place of living etc. etc.).
- TomOfTTB 17y ago
  I've always said I'm a victim of the liberal educational system. They taught me to treat people of all skin colors equal and then threw me into a world where everyone with a different skin color (I'm white) treats me unequally. The problem, it seems to me, is that people of other races don't realize there will always be prejudice. That someone who has prejudice against another because of their skin color is no different than a person who has prejudice against someone for any other reason they couldn't prevent (grew up in a certain place, speaks in a certain way, etc...) So racial prejudice will never fully go away and people who think they can define themselves by race until it does will always define themselves by race.
- arien 17y ago
  Personally, I believe that it has to do with the role of women in the current society, not exactly with the race. I don't live in America, but I think the trend is present in most western countries anyway. We're jumping from the "dependant housewive" to the "independent worker". I remember my mom used to say when I was a kid that I had to find a good husband. But now I have my own house and a good job... I don't need to marry a man to provide myself. It sounds cruel, but I don't think people married in the past just because they loved each other so much. As said in the article, it was a necessity, but such thing is ceasing to exist, so the disposition of people for marriage is decreasing.
  - nopassrecover 17y ago
    I don't think people would marry today just because they love each other either. The system is setup in such a way that people often have an incentive to leave the marriage and perhaps with more women being financially independent they are just as concerned with the fallout of a marriage as compared to a good long-term relationship.
  - 17y ago
alanthonyc 17y ago
Many of the conclusions drawn about marriage apply to many Americans...regardless of race.
Mz 17y ago
"How have we gotten here? What has shifted in African American customs, in our community, in our consciousness, that has made marriage seem unnecessary or unattainable?" Well, for one thing: Welfare. Welfare was created at a time when most poor, single moms were "the deserving poor" -- ie widowed -- and having a child out of wedlock was a big taboo and hardly done. Welfare, while well-meaning, was (unfortunately) designed in a manner that rewards women for becoming poor, single moms -- and thus actively grew the population that fits this profile by changing the social contract. Although (iirc) most people on welfare are white, the small amount of money involved in getting food stamps and welfare is more alluring to people who are very poor and live in neighborhoods where the mentality is one of hopelessness, with no expectation that one can get ahead honestly. Add in the fact that blacks are "last hired, first fired" and the tendency for young black males to be the biggest victim of that reality, and you have a situation ripe for developing a culture where a woman has a baby by one man, gets on welfare, breaks up with him and then finds a different boyfriend -- in part because a father is expected to provide for his kids (and gets booted out the door when he cannot) but mom's new boyfriend is seen as generous for doing anything for the kids, even if he doesn't actually provide for them. "Gifts" are enough. There are some books, articles and studies about such things. I've read a fair amount of stuff like that over the years. On the upside, I've seen some stuff that indicates that black women tend to have more say in how the money is spent when they are part of a couple than white women do. The paychecks of black women are more needed for a black couple to make it at all. The paycheck of a married white woman who has kids is more likely to be seen as "fun money" -- something the family can spend on vacations and other extras but not really needed for basic necessities -- and this tends to carry with it less "voting" power when financial decisions are made.
patio11 17y ago
At the risk of stepping on a landmine, what if the issue isn't so much black people aren't marrying as (a large portion of) black men are unmarriagable? (Unemployed or underemployed, have drug problems, involved with the criminal justice system, etc. Pick any socioeconomic system you want to look at, young single black males do not come out looking great in aggregate.) Combine that with a cultural norm in (a large portion of) the black community to not get married outside of one's race, and you'd expect to see this. You could construct other situations where marriagable women outnumber marriagable men and see what that does to the marriage rates, too. Example: college practically anywhere in the United States in the 2000s, compared to college in past generations. When the population is about fifty-fifty male/female, the equilibrium favors a lot of pairings. When it is 60/40 F/M, at least 1/3 of women are structurally incapable of being in a traditional monogamous relationship. (Then add in the cultural change that happens once some portion of men realize this and act on it -- the "hookup culture".)
- RK 17y ago
  Combine that with a cultural norm in (a large portion of) the black community to not get married outside of one's race, and you'd expect to see this. You'll notice that the author never suggests that black women look to men in the other 78% of the US population for a potential husband. I guess that would be worse than never getting married.
  - RK 17y ago
    Edit: should be other 87% of the US population.
nazgulnarsil 17y ago
don't get government sanctioned contracts involved in personal relationships. doubly so if you aren't even religious. people used to get married out of necessity and social pressure. that necessity is disappearing.

72 points by andreyf 17y ago

"He believes that his presence and example in the home is why both his sons decided to marry when their girlfriends became pregnant." How about just not getting girls pregnant in the first place?

andreyf 17y ago

I'm really torn between whether this is about those crazy black kids that won't get off my lawn, or the future our society is heading in... ideas?

jibiki 17y ago
Sorry, can someone explain why this comment has been downmodded? The original article is quite ambiguous: the author saw the decline of marriage as both bad and good (or at least practical.) This is a common attitude to hold towards change, and I don't see why pointing it out would be improper etiquette.
sown 17y ago
Maybe it'll be like europe some how where people seem to not get married in large numbers.
- eru 17y ago
  And they do not get a lot of kids either. (In most parts.) Though that does not seem to correlate. Fertility in Scandinavia is relatively high for European standards, and they do not care too much about wedlock any longer.

thras 17y ago

I wouldn't worry. Whites are going down the crapper pretty fast too. Take a look at this chart: http://blog.american.com/?p=714 http://blog.american.com/?p=714 Marriage is for wealth-preservers and wealth-creators. That's not the direction that society is trending.

skwaddar 17y ago

Blacks and their slavery shoulder chip, GET OVER IT Newsflash : "more Irish were sold as slaves to the American colonies and plantations from 1651 to 1660 than the total existing “free” population of the Americas" http://www.ewtn.com/library/HUMANITY/SLAVES.TXT http://www.ewtn.com/library/HUMANITY/SLAVES.TXT http://www.scoilgaeilge.org/academics/slaves.htm http://www.scoilgaeilge.org/academics/slaves.htm From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland's population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade. Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children. Britain's solution was to auction them off as well. During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers. http://www.africaresource.com/rasta/sesostris-the-great-the-egyptian-hercules/the-irish-slave-trade-forgotten-white-slaves/ http://www.africaresource.com/rasta/sesostris-the-great-the-...

arien 17y ago
That's like, totally irrelevant to what the article is about. The author points out the fact that it's strange that the marriage rate was higher during slavery than in present times. It's just an observation, not a whine. The article overall is very interesting (from a woman's point of view, at least) and IMO applies to most modern women nowadays, not just black women. But the title smells of linkbait.
emmett 17y ago
First - great collection of links. The history of slavery deserves a more thorough understanding than what's normally taught in high school. And yet, it was not the Irish who couldn't vote as late as the 60s, nor were the Irish the ones in segregated schools through the 70s, nor were there Irish divisions of the armed forces in World War II sent on the most dangerous missions. There were not masses of Irishmen enslaved in the south (de jure, and then defacto) through the 1800s and 1900s. Are black people the only people to be oppressed and discriminated against in history? Clearly not. But as late as 4 decades ago, well within the lifetime of people still alive, black people have suffered a far greater weight of discrimination than any other ethnic group in America. The after-effects of recent black slavery and segregation continue to be felt today. Saying "get over it" suggests a lack of understanding of the ways that those effects still persist.

steveeq1 17y ago

And how does this relate to hacker news?

kqr2 17y ago
From the HN guidelines: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
- asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
  The HN-worthiness of this article aside, I continue to be amazed just how quickly and how far anyone who posits the question is down voted. It's surprising how all the diverse interests here share such an extreme intolerance for this meta discussion. It's a fascinating dynamic.
  - swolchok 17y ago
    pg says it's boring. I'm increasingly inclined to agree.
TomOfTTB 17y ago
It’s a stretch, I’ll grant you that (I didn’t submit it). But to me this is an interesting challenge to the technology community. Having people in good marriages is a positive thing. It’s good for society (it promotes stability in a population), it’s good for individuals (who always have someone to rely on no matter how tough things get) and it’s good for children (divorced parents show up as a negative factor in every study that includes it). So people not wanting to marry is a problem. It’s already been proven that technology has the potential to correct social ills that modern society inflicts. For example, sites like eHarmony step in and use profiling for busy adults who don’t have time to hang out in bars every night looking for the right person. That in mind read this quote from the article... Among African Americans, the desire for marriage seems to have a different trajectory for women and men. My observation is that black women in their twenties and early thirties want to marry and commit at a time when black men their age are more likely to enjoy playing the field. As the woman realizes that a good marriage may not be as possible or sustainable as she would like, her focus turns to having a baby, or possibly improving her job status, perhaps by returning to school or investing more energy in her career. As men mature, and begin to recognize the benefits of having a roost and roots (and to feel the consequences of their risky bachelor behavior), they are more willing to marry and settle down. By this time, however, many of their female peers are satisfied with the lives they have constructed and are less likely to settle for marriage to a man who doesn't bring much to the table. You see, there’s a disconnect here. One technology can fix. One that should be presented to people who can fix it (namely, people who read Hacker News). Again, posting it here is a stretch but I’m not sure it’s an unacceptable one. P.S. It also might help solve problems with hacker news. Like...I wish there was a "QUOTE" tag...for example

lionhearted 17y ago

> Sex, love and childbearing have become a la carte choices rather than a package deal that comes with marriage. The American legal system right now is absolutely draconian and broken to men. A man can try to be a good father and husband, do nothing wrong except be a bit of a putz, then his wife divorces him, gets full custody of the kids, and 30-50% of his after-tax income. She receives more money if he doesn't get custody of the kids, so women who don't like a man often fight for that. So people mention prenups as a way to make sure these things are understood. Unfortunately, prenuptial agreements "that weren't fair enough" routinely get thrown out of court. If the prenup was "under duress", it gets thrown out. That includes the man saying he won't get married without the prenup - that means it was under duress and coerced, toss that sucker, split everything up. Now most guys give it a try anyway, and say, "Well, I'm different, I'm going to have a stronger relationship and do xyz and zyx and...." - and that's admirable. But a lot of people look at the courts and want nothing to do with it. Anyone who is familiar with how otherwise good and nice people act when they're given ridiculous leverage and power gets a little scared at the court system. There's other factors. But black people know this. I had the radio on yesterday, and "celebrity news" came on. A rapper named Nas - black man who was married to a black woman - is now getting divorced. One child. He's got to pay $150,000 per month in alimony and child support. Some teenager hears that on the radio, thinks it's crazy, and decides he's rather uninterested in marriage. If the laws were made less brutal, I think you'd see more people marrying, marrying at an earlier age, having more children, and paradoxically - I think the divorce rate would go down. Certainly, it'd be hard to make something worse than the current state of affairs.

jacquesm 17y ago
The American legal system has lots of things that are very hard to explain to foreigners. The sheer amount of case law and the jury system make for lots of income for lawyers and very little justice. Child support should be limited to what it actually costs to rear a child, not some arbitrary multiple of that.
- pyre 17y ago
  It varies from child to child. If someone's child is in some rich boarding school, I personally think they should be allowed to continue on at that school unless it is financially infeasible for both parents to live apart and still afford it. If the 'bare minimum' of raising a child is $300/month, then I don't think they the child should necessarily be forced out of their school and into the public school system or something just _because_ that's the bare minimum. I think that these factor should be taken into account. disclaimer: I am _not_ a rich person, nor do I have any children. {edit} That said, if the monthly child-support is determined to be really high based on the child going to an expensive school, the child-support payment should be reduced if the custodial parent decides to pull the child out of that school for a cheaper one {/edit}

nopassrecover 17y ago

What is the American obsession with race? I'm sure there's a more useful explanation behind these rates (perhaps family tradition of marriage, income, place of living etc. etc.).

TomOfTTB 17y ago
I've always said I'm a victim of the liberal educational system. They taught me to treat people of all skin colors equal and then threw me into a world where everyone with a different skin color (I'm white) treats me unequally. The problem, it seems to me, is that people of other races don't realize there will always be prejudice. That someone who has prejudice against another because of their skin color is no different than a person who has prejudice against someone for any other reason they couldn't prevent (grew up in a certain place, speaks in a certain way, etc...) So racial prejudice will never fully go away and people who think they can define themselves by race until it does will always define themselves by race.
arien 17y ago
Personally, I believe that it has to do with the role of women in the current society, not exactly with the race. I don't live in America, but I think the trend is present in most western countries anyway. We're jumping from the "dependant housewive" to the "independent worker". I remember my mom used to say when I was a kid that I had to find a good husband. But now I have my own house and a good job... I don't need to marry a man to provide myself. It sounds cruel, but I don't think people married in the past just because they loved each other so much. As said in the article, it was a necessity, but such thing is ceasing to exist, so the disposition of people for marriage is decreasing.
- nopassrecover 17y ago
  I don't think people would marry today just because they love each other either. The system is setup in such a way that people often have an incentive to leave the marriage and perhaps with more women being financially independent they are just as concerned with the fallout of a marriage as compared to a good long-term relationship.
- 17y ago

alanthonyc 17y ago

Many of the conclusions drawn about marriage apply to many Americans...regardless of race.

Mz 17y ago

"How have we gotten here? What has shifted in African American customs, in our community, in our consciousness, that has made marriage seem unnecessary or unattainable?" Well, for one thing: Welfare. Welfare was created at a time when most poor, single moms were "the deserving poor" -- ie widowed -- and having a child out of wedlock was a big taboo and hardly done. Welfare, while well-meaning, was (unfortunately) designed in a manner that rewards women for becoming poor, single moms -- and thus actively grew the population that fits this profile by changing the social contract. Although (iirc) most people on welfare are white, the small amount of money involved in getting food stamps and welfare is more alluring to people who are very poor and live in neighborhoods where the mentality is one of hopelessness, with no expectation that one can get ahead honestly. Add in the fact that blacks are "last hired, first fired" and the tendency for young black males to be the biggest victim of that reality, and you have a situation ripe for developing a culture where a woman has a baby by one man, gets on welfare, breaks up with him and then finds a different boyfriend -- in part because a father is expected to provide for his kids (and gets booted out the door when he cannot) but mom's new boyfriend is seen as generous for doing anything for the kids, even if he doesn't actually provide for them. "Gifts" are enough. There are some books, articles and studies about such things. I've read a fair amount of stuff like that over the years. On the upside, I've seen some stuff that indicates that black women tend to have more say in how the money is spent when they are part of a couple than white women do. The paychecks of black women are more needed for a black couple to make it at all. The paycheck of a married white woman who has kids is more likely to be seen as "fun money" -- something the family can spend on vacations and other extras but not really needed for basic necessities -- and this tends to carry with it less "voting" power when financial decisions are made.

patio11 17y ago

At the risk of stepping on a landmine, what if the issue isn't so much black people aren't marrying as (a large portion of) black men are unmarriagable? (Unemployed or underemployed, have drug problems, involved with the criminal justice system, etc. Pick any socioeconomic system you want to look at, young single black males do not come out looking great in aggregate.) Combine that with a cultural norm in (a large portion of) the black community to not get married outside of one's race, and you'd expect to see this. You could construct other situations where marriagable women outnumber marriagable men and see what that does to the marriage rates, too. Example: college practically anywhere in the United States in the 2000s, compared to college in past generations. When the population is about fifty-fifty male/female, the equilibrium favors a lot of pairings. When it is 60/40 F/M, at least 1/3 of women are structurally incapable of being in a traditional monogamous relationship. (Then add in the cultural change that happens once some portion of men realize this and act on it -- the "hookup culture".)

RK 17y ago
Combine that with a cultural norm in (a large portion of) the black community to not get married outside of one's race, and you'd expect to see this. You'll notice that the author never suggests that black women look to men in the other 78% of the US population for a potential husband. I guess that would be worse than never getting married.
- RK 17y ago
  Edit: should be other 87% of the US population.

nazgulnarsil 17y ago

don't get government sanctioned contracts involved in personal relationships. doubly so if you aren't even religious. people used to get married out of necessity and social pressure. that necessity is disappearing.