The Myth of the Marriage-Phobe

The theme of the man who’s afraid of getting married has been told in an untold number of films, books, god-awful sitcoms, dating guides (never mention the “m” word on a date!!), and all other media. Two and a Half Men, Avenue Q, Tomcats (originally entitled Buying the Cow), and (infamously) The Tom Leykis Show. Having grown up on all this media, and, by extension, this fact of American culture, I reached my mid-twenties fully expecting to still be surrounded by eligible bachelors. The whole despairing over being unable to find Mr. Right was for 30-somethings, as in Bridget Jones’s Diary, Sex in the City, Friends, While You Were Sleeping, Must Love Dogs, etc. etc. etc—not for women MY age. As it turned out, however, I ended up seeing friend after friend get hitched, to the point where by the time I turned 25, nearly ALL of my peers are married, engaged, or living with their partners in serious relationships that had lasted at least a year. I discovered the hard way—although, really, I should’ve known better—that this cliche was no different from every other: without any basis in reality.

Now, I’m not blaming the media for my singledom. I know fully well that that's due to the fact that I’m ugly, obnoxious, and reclusive. But nonetheless, I can’t help but notice the discrepancy between cultural assumption and reality. Some of you may be saying, "Well, hold on a minute: that cliche does in fact have total basis in reality and I myself am, in fact, a bachelor deathly afraid of being pushed into marriage, as are all of my friends." And to that I ask: where the hell ARE you guys?? I do actually know one of your kind, but he's one out of god knows how many—a far lower percentage than what the cliche would have you believe. I know an “n” of 1 (i.e. me) is a pretty shitty group of samples for a survey, but am I really that unfortunate of a sample that I would be the ONE girl in the world whose group of male friends who are the only marriage-acceptant ones in the world??

So why does this cliche persist? The obvious reason is that a man afraid to get married provides a lot more conflict that a man totally happy to get married. I would posit that this is a much more obnoxious conflict that any other a writer could possibly imagine, let alone, as I’ve mentioned, a clearly unrealistic one, but it nevertheless does provide conflict.

The second most obvious explanation is that the hordes of men I know who have flung themselves into marriage did, in fact, go through an internal tussle over committment and giving up their swingin’ single days, but it just went completely unbeknownst to me. Perhaps this cultural perception is in fact accurate, but accurate to something that girls are completely unaware of in reality. Married (or otherwise committed) males will have to post their thoughts to validate or invalidate this.

What I’m going to suggest is MOST likely, however, is more complex than all of the above. I hypothesize that all those married men I know were not, in fact, petrified of and reluctant to and dragged into getting married, but that all their unmarried compatriots—that one guy out of the hundred or whatever I know—are, and that this is the percentage—small though it may be—that makes it to the big screen and that gives rise to the generalization that ALL men are afraid of getting married. As with any process of natural selection, by the time a male population reaches their 30s, the only ones left are, more than likely, the ones afraid of marriage. If they weren’t, they’d already BE married. And these are the ones that those sad-sack 30-something women in Sex and the City et al have to deal with. The ones I’M going to have to deal with.

So I don’t think this cliche is as pervasive as the media suggests. It’s not that 99% of 30-something men in toto are afraid of marriage; it’s that 99% of UNMARRIED 30-something men are afraid of marriage.

The most unfortunate repercussion of that statistic is that 99% of even late-20s men are already married. So that means that 1% of 1%--of one out of every TEN THOUSAND* (without even counting looks, compatibility, etc. that go into selecting a boyfriend)—is single and not obnoxiously dreading their girlfriend pleading with them to get married.

So, essentially, I just lost the musical chairs game of marriage without even knowing that the game had started.

*Statistics not the result of a comprehensive survey.