Have a gander at this:
thoughts? pic.twitter.com/BPS6W4K5xG
— Barefoot Pregnant (@usuallypregnant) November 13, 2025
Give it a few seconds to horrify you before continuing on.
Marriage in these Unted States has devolved from an alliance of loving partners to a high-stakes adventure. This isn’t a new subject, here or elsewhere. You’d think we would have learned something by now. Yet I continue to be appalled at the behavior of individuals whose spouses thought they loved one another. The above example is one of many.
About twenty years ago, we were astonished at Iowa man Travis Frey and his “Contract of Wifely Expectations.” I can’t find the “contract” any longer, though there are still numerous news stories about it on the Web. It was a remarkable document, and not in a good way. It expressed possibly the most extreme demands a man might make on his wife short of felonious conduct. Suffice it to say that when it became public, it met with general disapproval.
Shortly after Frey and his notions made the news, there came a counterstroke from the distaff side. What’s just below was told to Dr. Helen Smith a.k.a. Mrs. Instapundit:
I met a woman that I was sure was my soul mate. I was deeply in love and so, I thought, was she. All this changed when I lost my high paying job through downsizing. To my credit, I went to work immediately and had two jobs, but still only made about 80% of my old income. My wife gave me a year and then began sleeping with a man who hadn’t lost his job in my bed while I was at work. She left with him, taking almost all of my savings and anything else she could carry. Her explanation was that she was “an expensive bitch” and she was unhappy because I worked so much. The adultery doesn’t seem to matter to the court and she got essentially everything. Besides the financial losses, I was so devastated by the betrayal that I could barely function for months. She treated me like garbage and I never worked harder at any endeavor in my life.
The tale at the start of this piece doesn’t look so unusual after all, does it? It makes me wonder: why would anyone marry, given hazards like the above and the general diminution of good will between the sexes?
It seems that marriage still holds the promise of some highly desirable things, despite the possibilities depicted above.
I could go into a long dissertation about the institution of marriage, how it began, what ends it was intended to serve, and what’s happened to it since. I’m not in the mood. Besides, I doubt my Gentle Readers are hungry for such a piece, and anyway I have other matters to attend to.
I hope the material above will stimulate some reflections among younger Americans. At the very least, the marriage-minded should try to ask themselves the following questions:
- What do I expect out of marriage?
- How likely am I to be disappointed?
- What will I do if it “doesn’t work out?”
Note that I said try. Most young people are indisposed to candor about such things, even in the privacy of their own thoughts. There’s a reason for that old German saying “Ve get too soon old und too late schmart.”
Let’s transform the questions above just a wee bit:
- What does she expect out of marriage?
- How likely is she to be disappointed?
- What will she do if it “doesn’t work out?”
What are the odds that your prospective spouse would be candid with herself about the answers? If she were to bridle at the suggestion that she consider them, what would that do to your willingness to marry her?
Quite coincidentally, a friend and I were talking about some of her marital experiences just yesterday. She’s had three husbands, and had the following to say about all three:
[Mr. X] really was a nice man at first, Fran — charming, funny, thoughtful. I never would’ve seen what was coming. But over time, he changed; it was like watching someone harden from the inside out. Now he’s bitter, controlling, and mean just for the sake of it. I honestly hate dealing with him — it’s like he takes pleasure in twisting the knife every time we talk....
Like all my ex-husbands did — kind, attentive. But over time, they changed.
My unnamed friend is a genuinely good woman: kind, thoughtful, generous, and accomplished. I cannot believe that she was the reason... but incredulity has no evidentiary value, as the lawyers tell us.
And now, with the Omnipotent State telling us that marriage doesn’t have to be between one man and one woman, that it comes with no particular obligations, and that it can be dissolved for any reason or none, what are we to predict for it: the oldest human institution, the bedrock of every stable society known to history?
Just a few early-morning thoughts.
2 comments:
Maybe it is because I've become so accustomed to AI generated BS, or maybe because I'm more inclined to have faith that casual relationships are less attractive due to the increased dangers from unbridled monsters, my instant reaction to the perfidy we're told of in your introductory panel, is that it's invented. I cannot think of any man, however weak, telling the world of such straits.
Ultimately, creating anxiety and distrust is exactly the kind of thing "the Omnipotent State" wants to impart so that the younger set never couples. Never coupling is the next best thing to sterilization, and that is the next best thing to murder.
I didn't say this to in any way to diminish your other great insights, only that I understand that not having to think all the time of the many machinations of the death cult religion followed zealously by our rulers may be a blessing in disguise.
I had to tell my son that he needed to leave his wife. She was cheating on him and she was manipulating him trying to cause violence to get him put in jail. She would start an argument and then rip her blouse and scratch her neck or worse and call the police and accuse him of hitting her. Three times, and three times he waited outside explained to the police when they showed up and the police investigated and believed him. I told him that one day they would believe her, she would get better at lying and setting him up and he would go to jail.
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