How to Make Dysfunctional Love Last Forever

Women fought to make marriage more equal and less oppressive. Why is it plummeting in popularity then?

Before we power through today’s issue, let me send a heartfelt gracias to

Andrew Rodwin

for financially supporting this little corner full of questionable content. Thank you Andrew; we’re not at party yacht money yet, but we’re getting there 🖤

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Greetings fellow booty calls and welcome to yet another edition of my crippling commitment issues.

Young people aren't marrying anymore.

You'd think all these twenty-somethings with Tinder swipe fatigue would be tired of being the big spoon to a pillow every night, but no — the popularity of marriage is on such deep a nosedive I might as well come forth to confirm the bad news.

All the good ones are taken.

From the US all the way to China, the Internet seems to have bred a generation of chronically uncuddleable back slouchers who refuse to venture past the "It's complicated" realm of Facebook's relationship status updates. They won't even do it for the tax breaks.

This is all women's fault.

I know I sound like a walking fedora who's having trouble slipping off his full-body red flag costume when I say that, but think about it — women were the ones who took a look at the traditional gender roles of the cereal-packet family and decided to revolt against them.

Was this a good thing? Yes. Girls aren't forced to marry a retrograde manspreader fresh out of puberty anymore. They can have their own careers and bank accounts. They can power pose to the beat of Beyoncé's Single Ladies and win their own bread as they fancy.

A second-wave feminist's wet dream: women can marry for love, not obligation.

And right as the Women's Movement left marriage exactly to their liking, in a perfect Goldilocks equilibrium of fairness, equality and choice — now they decide to channel their inner meet-and-greet Taylor Swift and start signing autographs on stacks of divorce papers?

Hard to argue with this: Women initiate divorce 69% of the time, increasing to 90% if they're college-educated — which means one thing; fellas, if your woman is at uni, make sure she is not being sweet talked by an Indiana Jones-looking professor into earning extra(marital) credits. Just saying.

They thought they fixed marriage — but they broke it.

It's nice to find someone your horoscope writer approves of, don't get me wrong, but women made digesting butterflies into the prime dealbreaker at the forefront of our long-term relationships, so now we gotta deal with the consequences.

For starters, no one's marrying young and naive — I mean willingly — it just doesn't make sense anymore. There was a time when love wasn't expected to be ripe and fully formed in time for the first table read of the marriage vows. It was supposed to be built over time; to help you power through the post-honeymoon phase and work on it until irreconcilable differences about the possession of the remote control did you apart.

Now, women looking for long-term relationships expect romcom love right off the gate. They don't wanna partner up, they wanna soulmate up. And since there is a copious revolving door of algorithmically-tailored mates waiting to audition for the role, you can bet they'll shoot their shot at Prince Charming, not settle with Needs McTherapy over there.

Why settle for anything less than true love anyway?

I'll tell you why; because these draconian standards aren't pairing up people who can ace compatibility quizzes together. They're not heralding a golden era of Netflix and Chill.

What they do is keep people on the lookout for the little faults and blemishes in the relationship that confirm they can do better. Neither side is willing to take things forward, to show their dedication. As he closes up on chivalry, she opens up an OnlyFans, and even co-owning a dog sounds like an untenable responsibility.

This made modern dating into a noncommittal parade of shallow hookups with less intimacy than a LinkedIn connection. A series of half-assed "situationships," or whatever term Gen Zers use to cope with the fact that even Hitler had a girlfriend.

Think about it: Dating apps are the main way couples meet now. Well, perhaps "meet" is a big word — they prospect each other's features and benefits. Because that's what our modern approach to dating really is; a gamified, nonrefundable doomscroll optimized for TL;DR attention spans in which women are supposed to feel empowered whenever they're coerced into cheap sex by the guy who texts them the water droplets emoji. Chivarly is for knight-errants anyway, no?

Like it or not, traditional marriages did something right.

They put an emphasis not on love, but on commitment. Not on the getting together, but on the staying together.

Sure they had their rough edges. I don't think anyone here wants to bring legal marital rape back, or some of the customs in the Middle Ages, where you would've probably ended up speed-dating all your siblings to consolidate the family wealth and keep the cachet of the surname.

The point is, we've been improving on the concept for a long time now. We got rid of domestic abuse and family swinger parties; those were huge improvements. But we've also put too much of an obsession on romantic love, and that was a mishap. It made marriages a lot fairer, but a lot more unstable than before too.

And marriage can't simply be about living your best life in a perfect Instagram-filtered fairytale of platonic flawlessness anyway. There's a reason why people's vows include poverty, sickness, and death. Because marriage is strongest when, in our worst days and moods, gives us the confidence that our partner is not gonna run away, looking for some new-and-improved model. And isn't that a beautiful thing to strive for?

Or am I being a hopeless romantic?

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But enough small talk. I would wish you a Happily Ever After, but as André Lauren Benjamin sang in "Hey Ya!":

If what they say is
"Nothing is forever"
then what makes 🙈 
then what makes 🙊 
then what makes 🙉
then what makes love the exception?

Stay cocky,

Loudt