Piece of Advice #90: Don't sign up to be part of his harem

Modernity has layered the concept of marriage with so much emotion and romanticism that we women tend to forget that, at heart, marriage has always been an economic arrangement.  Women and men exchange sexual freedom and the ability to "trade up" for, in his case, ownership, proximity, and the assurance of parenting his own children as well as regular sex and, in her case, financial support and protection during the vulnerable times of pregnancy and motherhood and eventually old age, as well as investment in her children.

That's the matrimony deal.  Now people being complex, marriage is also a number of other things.  Historically it was often the opportunity to merge powerful families and build up capital.  Sometimes when people have been exceptionally well suited, it has been the chance to live with a best friend and best lover forever.  To less well suited people it was often an inescapable prison.  Marriage is sometimes miserable, more often bearable, frequently - when its players are mature adults - workable, and, on the other end of the spectrum, sometimes very pleasurable.  The same marriage can, in fact, cycle through those states from misery to ecstasy under different circumstances with that marriage still fulfilling its main societal goal: insuring that men stay invested in the welfare of children, their children, the next generation.  Most women don't need a contract to stay invested in their children because they know for certain their children are theirs.  But men, who do not grow their children inside them, need a bit more proof that all that energy they are going to expend is going to their own progeny.  Thus, marriage.

Now, the harem.  Historically, only rich and powerful men have been able to afford to have a harem.  The care of many women and the resulting children is prohibitively expensive, but for men who can afford it, the incentive is sexual access to a variety of women he is attracted to.  Not all harems have been the middle-eastern, guarded-by-eunuchs variety.  Wealthy European men had a string of mistresses instead, but it was the same deal.  For the women involved this arrangement provided financial stability, but usually far less paternal investment in her children.  Her provider usually had a wife and legitimate children, and his time was taken up with them.

The final sex-for-money deal is the brothel.  This transaction is far simpler.  Sexual participation for a set fee.  The wages earned, if generous enough, can be saved up and used for future needs, but this is a 401K deal at best, not a pension.  What's more, brothel work generally excludes a woman from the first two options as men are only interested in wives if their chastity can be counted on and mistresses if they are 1) very beautiful and 2) rather particular.  Men do not invest at all in brothel children as paternity can not/could not be determined.

Women, the only one of the above three options worth pursuing is marriage.  The price of sex has been driven so low by porn and promiscuity that the mistress deal is off the table for all but the fabulously beautiful and well connected, and the fabulously beautiful can and should shoot for marriage anyway.  It's a far better deal.  For many woman who do not understand the economic underpinnings of relationships the dating scene has become a weekly grind of less and less enthusiastic brothel work - for the price of dinner or perhaps even a latte - leveraged against the potential of a future better deal.  But the longer a woman stays in the dating sphere, the less likely she will be able to make that happen.  Because most women are competing for the same successful, colorful, or aggressively sexual men, and those men, having such a supply of sex at no cost are the least likely to offer anything else, especially to women who are older and more jaded.  Why would they?

All of the above came to mind when I was directed to the blog of dating adventures, A Pre-life Crisis.  The author is considered by her friends to be "the brunette 'Carrie Bradshaw'."  She states that she hasn't paid for dinner in a year and dates all of the time.  In an arc of posts about her most recent dating adventures, she describes meeting The Lawyer who is tall, dark, handsome, successful, well educated, athletic, and lives in New York (the author lives in Boston).  They met in a bar when he was visiting her hometown, hit it off, and then a little over a week later she went to New York City to spend the weekend with him and salivate over the designer clothes and accessory shops on Fifth Avenue.  Then, when she got back to Boston, he completely blew her off, finally texting her some generic messages a week or so later.

Now, despite the fact that this woman's lifestyle and materialism conflict heavily with my own values, I write this out not to mock or excoriate her, but because pursuing men who won't commit to them is becoming a common experience for women.  This guy, this sexy, young lawyer guy isn't going to start something serious with her.  Even if distance were not an issue, he's the kind of guy women will travel from out of state on their own dime to gift with sex.  That's nice work if you can get it.  He's twenty-seven, is unlikely to want children right now, and has no other incentive to offer something more permanent to a woman.  Additionally, she sounds very expensive.  He's undoubtedly up to his hairline in student loans, but whatever successful lawyer cash does come his way after bills are paid he probably doesn't want to go straight to Armani, Harry Winston, and Versace.  Bagging him as a husband would be quite a coup for her, but, let's face it, he's not going to be faithful anyway.  Men with those kinds of options seldom are.  It would be far, far better for her to take a good hard look in the mirror, tally up her assets realistically, and then look again at the line of men taking her out to dinner.  Odds are that, among that number, there's at least one guy who would not use her for sex, toy with her emotions, and would eventually be willing to commit to her.  He might not be a tall, dark, handsome, hockey-playing lawyer guy, but to this middle-aged married woman's eye, Lawyer Guy is not so great.