Cons of Marriage – Why Women Should Not Get Married
Marriage is NOT The Answer it Once Was for Women
In my mind no Black woman with the education, money and skill set to chart her own course in life should ever view marriage as a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Marriage for the most part is a burdensome, thankless, exhausting institution that places women in a chokehold of responsibility and obligation to meeting the needs of other people, and nothing to worry about not having in your life.
Marriage is no longer required for women to be recognized by society, nor is it required to own property, travel the world, to enjoy an active satisfying sex life, nor to bear and raise children. Marriage for the modern Black woman is something you have the right and freedom to embrace or turn your back on with a smile, confident that you are making a choice that suits your lifestyle.
Black women please stop worrying about finding a husband. Please do not allow White media to compare you to women of other races so that you are portrayed in a negative light. You are beautiful, you are smart, and you have always led the way in society by setting an example of female independence and strength.
Remember, White women fought for female liberation and the right to work and live a life outside of their homes, whereas Black women had been doing those things for decades. Black women LEAD White women, we don’t follow them.
So if Black women are not marrying in droves, I believe this indicates a societal change in how women of ALL races may soon view marriage. Black women broke free from the chains of physical slavery and are breaking the binding chains of gender slavery to men masked as marriage. Statistics prove that women of other races are getting on the bandwagon as well and that the desire for marriage amongst American women is decreasing every year.
Black women do not need to lower their expectations and settle for less to have a Black man as a husband. What you Brothas need to understand is that having a beautiful Black wife is a singular honor and a privilege that you better appreciate… it’s not a right.
Men that have nothing to offer a woman in the way of emotional support, psychological security, physical safety and true partnership have no right to expect to marry. Men that demand to have a woman be submissive and who wants nothing more than to have a wife to serve them need to get a clue.
Women no longer desire to have a marriage where they live in a mental cage and deny their needs in order to meet a man’s. If men want to have wives in the future, they need to elevate their expectations of themselves and do all they can to meet women’s needs. Stop playing silly games, stop being verbally psychologically and physically abusive, stop treating Black women as nothing but booty calls, and stop cheating on the women you’ve made commitments to.
Become a reliable man of honor then someone might choose to curtail her freedom and marry you.
In closing, having an honest, respectful relationship with a companion could very well provide you with the positive male energy you seek my sistahs, but you do not have to be a man’s wife to acquire those benefits. You do not have to give up your freedom, career or autonomy either.
And anytime a relationship with a male doesn’t meet your needs, move on with a smile and a song in your heart, knowing that there is no shame in being single, professional, female and Black.
None at all.
Click to listen to the April 24, 2010 broadcast on the Date Smarter Not Harder talk show!
Black Women – Do You Really Need to Be Married?
He Said/She Said responds to a reader’s question “is marriage as an institution played out?”
Deborrah
Veteran social researcher, relationship advice columnist, author and radio host. Author of hundreds of articles on American and black culture, gender issues, singles, dating and relationships. Author of "Sucka Free Love!" , "The 24 Types of Suckas to Avoid," "The Black Church - Where Women Pray and Men Pray," and "Why Vegan is the New Black" all available on Amazon.Com. Her unique voice and insightful commentary have delighted fans and riled haters for 20 years. Read her stuff on SurvivingDating.Com and AskHeartBeat.Com.
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Category: Women's Issues
BTW, I do read, I often find when I do post statistics that many people do not like or agree with, they go off on the deep end, like you. I’m done.
If you have such a problem with what is going on, go to the media and be louder and let your voice be known.
No, I go by what I see in real life day to day interactions with human beings. I no too many women in real life who go on and on about how they need a man. I understand white women have high divorce rates. Where in my post did I indicate that I did not? I did not mean to stir up a rant.
@brooklynight, ‘The media uses propaganda to perpetuate and influence the masses to further their own agendas. Did you know that white southern women have the highest divorce rate in the nation?
You sound like a dude who doesn’t fact find for himself, doesn’t pick up scholarly journals, but simply go by what they ‘see on tv’. What media says.
Well it’s typical of black folks. Most of ‘us’ don’t read. Some one once said if you have money in the house and want to hide it, put it in between the folds of a book because black folks who might break in that will be the last place they’ll look.
Don’t be so quick to buy into the hype. In the last 3 years there have been numerous networks jumping on the ‘Oh woe is me educated black women can’t catch a man ‘wagon’.
Brothas are loving this because it builds them up while at the same time putting black professional women of today down.
Yet these same networks don’t broadcast any shows that delve into the marital state and the quality of marriages of nonblack women. Look at that and realize the attack on black women who have made strides in education/career/finances and see how the media is attempting to deflect from their success and send out the message to black women that brothas are too obtuse to see. ‘That no matter how successful you are, you are ‘less than because you aren’t a wife’.
But this message isn’t given to nonblack women.
The ‘media’ should be the last source you ‘believe. Just because it’s on TV doesn’t mean it hasn’t been packaged up and sold to viewers to consume like the poisoned ‘kool-aide that it is. Hopefully once sistahs start catching on to what the media is actually doing and the message it is sending out to young impressionable black girls, they’ll stop allowing themselves to be used as ‘tools’on TV to further the attack on black women of today.
So why do black women run to the media so much complaining about being married, when in reality they don’t want to? Somebody’s lying.
Trifling brothas and trifling post. What you dues fail to realize is that marriage in the traditional sense is DEAD! This is 2010. Women once married because they ‘HAD to. 30 to 40 years ago women didn’t have many employment options. They went from Daddy’s house to hubby’s house. They married because they didn’t have many options from teenager to womanhood. Also women had little control over their fertility.
Barefoot and preggers was the life that many women lead because before the invention of the pill (which was invented by men), women got pregnant. Men invented the pill as a way to free them from the responsibility of fathering children when they just wanted to sex up mulitple women without marrying them. Lot’s of research went into how a woman’s fertility could be regulated and free men to have sex with her without procreation.
Well Tada! Men succeeded but what they didn’t anticipate was that by allowing women to control their fertility, women were also empowered to be more than ‘breeders’.
No longer did women have to hang their head in shame because they were going to be preggers with children. Women also got to experience sexual freedom without babies too. With that women didn’t spend all their lives having baby after baby the way their grandmothers and great grandmothers did. Women could then do ‘other things with their lives besides being ‘wife and mother’. With the legalization of abortion, this empowered women even more!
With all of this empowerment, traditonal marriage as men know it, (which is really built on a woman being less empowered and dependent on men) the foundations of traditional marriage began to crumble.
We live in a day and time when no longer do women need men to have babies, raise a family or even take care of them and more and more women are realizing this. Men are scrambling around trying to figure out their place with women in 2010 and still trying to figure out how traditional marriage fits. Evidence points out that it doesn’t as evidenced by the high divorce rates which crosses racial/socio economic lines.
So men coming on this blog and spouting negative talk about women’s behavior as if that is the reason they are shunning marriage, are just fooling themselves. Plenty of older women (if they had the opportunities women have today) would probably shun it too.
@Monica I have to say I watched a young teenaged hispanic couple the other day. The dude who was knee high to a gnat, kept grabbing the girl’s face and it was sort of rough. in his handling her. She was embarrassed and she kept putting her head down as if she was embarrassed and wanted to tell this dude to stop grabbing her face like that but she was scared. I believe you when you say dudes get these young girls because they know they can dominate them ultimately abuse them.
Dudes who buy into that ‘women must submit before a man’ are dangerous dudes for a woman to tie herself with. Ultimately these are the very dudes that end up physically abusing women. I wouldn’t want to be with a dude who wanted me to submit so he could dominate. That’s not a healthy relationship and far too many black men buy into this type of thinking. But that is traditional marriage thinking, back when women had no rights at all and women and children were thought to be chattel/property owned by their husbands.
What most men fail to realize is that up until nearly the 20th century if not the 20th century women had very little legal protection/rights. Men ruled and had the say so over his household. Well that ‘ish’ has changed and in the blink of an eye (evolutionarily speaking) the social construct/dynamic of marriage and family structure has changed, and men can’t handle this change. They may as well handle it, because like any revolution, things aren’t going back to ‘tradition.
Not unless these dudes want to turn Morman.
DMV, you are stupid and your thinking straight out of 1612, just like I said. Why should a woman take your last name? She has a perfectly good name already. You keep yours don’t you when you get married? So why would a woman have to lose hers and take yours? Male privilege.
Respect the man as head of the household? You don’t want to do squat to make your presence known. You sit on the couch, remember? Your wife does everything else. Please tell me where you have earned the privilege of being head of anything but the Remote Control.
Won’t smile? What is there to smile about? You are a sourpuss and arrogant prick. No woman in her right mind would smile at your ass.
Won’t lose weight? WTF is this, a beauty contest? Let’s start fixing Black relationships by having men like you lose your funky attitudes when it concerns women needing to be anything to suit you.
Body size does not make a woman a quality wife. It’s funny how you guys get upset when a woman wants a man that has college degrees and makes a certain about of income, but when it comes to women you go right back to the shallow basics and focus on nothing but looks.
To think you are walking around presenting yourself as a man is shocking. I see you as nothing but an embarrassment to the Black race.
@Pat ,I love meeting the white liberal women who try to insist on how black men should raise their sons. You all give me something to laugh about.
Blackmen can’t raise their suns they are all sex-craised and simple minded. I believe that their sons should be put up for adoption because it takes a man and women to raise a child and the blackmen are fools. Black women should seek relationships from strong and understanding men from other races otherwise they are doomed
Black women not wanting to submit to men in marriage is not a surprise to me at all, its the reason why black men like myself won’t even consider marriage .
Many of us who witnessed our fathers going through divorces are quite aware of what women think of marriage .
It might surprise you but many men find marriage just as oppressive as you do, if not more .
If women rather do it alone, and raise children alone, I don’t have a problem with that as long as I don’t have to pay for your independence through child support or taxation .
What exactly do black women have to offer a man anyway ?
Attitude ?
Debt ?
Bastard kids ?
Std’s ?
You women can claim that you are the ones who are shunning marriage but we know better .
Ooooh another one who doesn’t get it. Theone, put that crack pipe down. It’s got you all messed you up. Is this an example of a bad attitude or bad spelling? Is theone a name or do you think you are the one? Silly egotistical names don’t make the man, sorry.
I agree with Don. Marriage doesn’t work for selfish people. There are so many self centered people nowadays, therefore marriages not working.
it is interesting now that many women are convincing themselves that they never wanted or should of wanted something they would not be able to get….its the “you aint ish anyway fool” syndrome……
if the author met a dude who made her gina tingle and knocked her off her feet this article would be null and void….
What you don’t know is that I have been married before, very happily I might add. But that does not excuse the fact that in spite of having met more than 500 single and allegedly eligible bachelors from all over the country since his death, I have not met ONE man that I would even think of marrying. Not good enough. And it’s funny how you focus singularly on sex as a reason for someone to marry. What a ‘tard. I can have sex until I pass out but I don’t need to marry the dyck for that reason homey! As the saying goes “no need to marry a pig just to get a little sausage!”
Good comeback Deborrah. Stay away from Ni99ers (ni99er meaning blackmen not women of course)
2 thumbs up
A happy and HEALTHY marriage takes HARD WORK from both parties involved…. period!
If marriage is such a bad prospect for women, especially black AMERICAN women then it’s because of the unrealistic expectations they have fed THEMSELVES all throughout their childhood (no thanks to those damned DISNEY fairy tales).
Women already know that a man will only get away with what a woman allows him to get away with. Not to excuse men’s bad behavior, but both genders need to make wiser choices in picking mates, and both genders need to be committed to making a marriage work.
In spite of the stereotype that women aren’t mechanically inclined, I would surmise that marriage is a crappy deal for women nowadays because they put more research and effort into learning and maintaining a car they’ll lease for two years than the man they’re supposed to marry for life… And before you go accusing me of woman-bashing the same applies to men—they put more time and effort into their cars than their marriage.
It’s not marriage that’s the problem, Deb… the problem is the attitude of the parties involved. People just don’t have the testicular and/or ovarian and intestinal fortitude to work a marriage. Folks have no interest in sticking to their marriage vows and have unrealistic expectations of marriage (and I think women have more unrealistic expectations than men).
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Good article that inspired me to write. Women need to put THEMSELVES first and think of their future. I am a white female. Black boys are raised WRONG, by their fathers who are WRONG, and THEIR fathers who were WRONG. This is sad and I feel for you. Women are called bitches because they have to be the man (SOMEONE HAS TO!) I was friendly to a black guy at work, (but I opened a can of worms!) He turned out to be another manipulative liar, mooch, controlling, and full of crap. The only thing he had to offer was lots of BS–sweet talk. I was hurt when I found out he does it to everyone. This is a LIAR who then says the woman is STUPID for believing him, (which in his mind gave him some credibility I guess.) He walks with a stupid swagger, like he is cool, slick, and desireable. LOL! He is also a master mooch, and good at making people feel sorry for him- usually he ran out of money again. ((He uses the fact that he is black, therefore he is treated bad and misunderstood too)) which is just the beginning of the manipulation. If you adopt the cute little puppy, soon he is out manipulating others and looking for someone else to understand him. (He hasn’t learned that life is hard, but it was YOU who give him a hard time.) What is scary is this is someone who is over 40, going on 10. I cut this guy off soon enough, but he is out there manipulating others, most likely younger ones who believe him and don’t know what a snake they are dealing with. Plenty of white guys are users and manipulators too, but it seems to be a learned attitude black boys observe, NEVER KNOWING what a real man is. It is time to shake the shackles guys. When women are bitches, it’s because men are wimps. Thank God for Obama. I am thankful he is in office, and pray he continues to be a good example for the black boys with their never ending list of anger and self esteem issues.
I agree black men are the clowns of the universe. I am also a white woman who got caught up in the hype of their physically attributes. Black men are foolish and controlling. I made the mistake of getting involved with one of these lowly 1/5th of a human being and he did nothing but lie, cheat, and manipulate me. He thought because i was the beautiful white woman that I am that he was going to get a free ride because of his work in the bedroom. I am glad I got away from this race of simple males. I feel sorry for the black women who have had to deal with them for all their lives, silly fathers, brothers, sons, and husbands. Beware of the foolish black man.
Thanks!
being a black guy i really not agree with this ….and strongly condemns that such things should not be happen…
Marriage in my culture is just as you said here. Mexican men are very chauvinistic and expect a woman to do everything and serve them. Many of them resent the Americanization of Latinas and are going back to Mexico to find a young girl that doesn’t even speak English to marry. They just want someone to cook and clean and have children for them.
My parents want me to get married soon and don’t understand why I want to go back to school to get my Masters. I am the first woman in my family to graduate from college. I am also the only female over 25 in our family still single and with no children. I want to do other things with my life.
Deborrah, I really love this article and applaud you for having the courage to say things most women are afraid to. I’ve printed it out to read again and again and also forwarded it to friends. You are telling the absolute truth about marriage — it is not for every woman and never was. I hope many young girls read this before they think about marriage.