Sukunai said:
Made this choice 25 years ago.
My son is 16, great kid.
There are many good reasons to get married, a few reasons some offer against it.
I don't support growing old alone. The government will tell you you are legally married after a point especially if you have kids with the person. So the license is more of a personal statement deal to the one you marry than anything else.
For those of you still young, it's hard to explain, as it's more a stage of growing up and getting older. No one really 'wants' to get married and have kids much while they are still one themselves to some extent. The urge isn't all that strong till you hit your mid 20s.
It's very rare I meet anyone that truly manages to maintain a desire to remain single or childless. It's part of being human to want to have a family.
You are an Old Person. Things were different when you grew up. The women were more respectable.
As someone young, let me explain what marriage is to a young man today.
In short, it is playing Russian Roulette with 4 chambers loaded.
>50% divorce rate. 3/4 of these are initiated by women for reasons that are pretty much "I'm bored" (I want to fuck other guys)
When a man is divorced, he will probably be kicked out of the house, lose the kids, lose 70%> of his assets since some can't be divided and he will have to pay alimony and child support leaving him with barely enough money from his own paycheck to live mired in poverty for years. She even gets this money and all of these assets plus the children (mother is awarded custody almost every time because on virtue of gender)... she even gets these things if you catch her fucking your best friend. No, I'm not kidding. It's called "no fault divorce."
When it comes to children, DNA testing laboratories prove 25 to 33% of all of their tests come back saying the man is not the father. This is because women nowadays cheat a whole lot. More than men by far. No, the "You are NOT the father!" line is not just hilarious made up drama on daytime television, though I have to admit that Maury is a genius for taking advantage of and making money off of this sad and disturbing fact.
So I figure if you combine the marriage failure rate with the rate of bastard children, it's like playing Russian Roulette with 4 chambers loaded. What sane man wants to gamble with those odds?