MARRIAGE

"Getting married in the 21st century is like building a house on land you will never own" 

Disclaimer - In many countries co habitation after a certain length of time can be treated by the law as actual marriage Cohabitation – your rights | The Law Society

Why modern marriage fails

The law is almost always on her side if it fails -  Marriage laws were written when most men were traditional breadwinners and most women were stay at home wives. There is nothing to stop her making up any story and you will be guilty until proven innocent. If there are children involved multiply this by a factor of ten. Getting married is like betting your future life, wealth and sanity on a woman not changing her mind.

Divorce - More than half of marriages end this way with the woman initiating two thirds of them. She can just decide to quit and any time and will often get rewarded for doing so. Even if you could prove 100% in court that you did nothing wrong.

Cheating (her) - Technology and social acceptance makes it easier for her to cheat than ever. If this happens you have 2 choices. 1) Dump her and face the legal and financial nightmare that follows. Or 2) Forgive her, the very act of taking her back confirms that you are an optionless beta male and will downgrade her attraction to you even further.

It's a one sided deal now - A woman once gave her youth, beauty, and sexual exclusivity. In return the man took care of her financially for the rest of her life. Today the average woman settles down much later, the idea of her being sexually exclusive to one man is just a joke. Yet the man is still expected to comply with the traditional marriage contract.

Dead bedroom - At the time of writing dead bedrooms on reddit has 409000 members. It's one of the most common complaints from men who are in long term relationships. Sometimes using sex as a bargaining chip. None of these men were complaining about sexual frequency when they first signed up for living together or marriage. She probably innated a lot of the sex herself. 

Not getting her sexual best - More and more men are discovering that their sexually reserved wives were far more adventurous with the players and bad boys who came before them. Paying for a woman's sexual retirement, no thanks !!!

She changes personality - Complains about his friends, habits or hobbies when married that she had no issue with when casually dating. Complying with her demands will just lead to more demands and reduced attraction.

She changes physically - Take a look at the wife of Pierce Brosnan who piled on the weight after marriage. Say what you want, but the simple fact is that he would never had gone near her if she looked like that when they first met. If it can happen to a James Bond actor what chance have the rest of us got.

Cheating (you) - If she gets fat, bitchy, sexless and you have options elsewhere. You will be seriously temped to use them. The odds are you will get caught and society will treat you a lot differently than if she had cheated on you. 

Statistically speaking, you will never be happily married. If you survive all of the above the most likely outcome is a boring or stressful marriage that drags on for decades. Many of your great grandparents back in the "good old days" had marriages that were like this. Too many people today are stuck in marriages they would be better off out of but can't leave because of social or financial reasons.

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There will always be high school sweethearts that are still happy together after a lifetime of marriage but these are the big exception (maybe 3% of the population) rather than the rule.

 

 

LONG COVID - What I learned from having an invisible illness.

 

"I'd rather spend another year in lockdown than another 6 months with long covid"

I wasn't massively worried about catching covid, I was fit, healthy and often went years without having a single day off work. I had no issues with having the vaccine but due to high demand it wasn't available where I lived. I just wasn't prepared to travel 20 miles by public transport to get it. It was a case of "I'll get it when it's available".

In July 2021 I was struck down with headaches and fatigue. The lateral flow tests (provided by work that were not that good) were negative. I simply assumed that I had a migraine as I was a life long sufferer. I also didn't have many of the common covid symptoms such as loss of taste, coughs or a high temperature. 

After a week I'd started to recover, after 2 weeks I'd describe myself as 80% recovered. But then I stayed at that same level for days, weeks, months. Headaches, fatigue and sore throats that were constantly reoccurring. Eventually I had to travel a 30 mile round trip and pay for a private blood test to confirm what I suspected, I did actually get covid. I did get vaccinated but by that point it was too late.

Long covid was horrendous because of the nature of the illness. I could have a sore throat so bad on Friday night I couldn't swallow food. Only to be perfectly fine the following morning. I could go out and socialise then suddenly feel bad again after a single beer. The near continuous low level headaches were particularly worrying. Then I'd have 2 or 3 days where I believed I was getting better only to go back to square one. The nature of the illness left me in a strange no mans land. I wasn't so ill I couldn't attend work but at the same time it was a struggle. I had a brand new illness that I had no way of knowing when I would ever recover.

WORK DIDN'T CARE

I didn't want to be off work sick long term because I would be bored out of my mind at home. Especially after all of the months spent in lockdown. At the same time I couldn't have lots of individual days off on my worst days due to the way work measures absenteeism. Bradford Factor - Wikipedia 

Since I did a physically demanding job and didn't "look ill" I constantly had to keep reminding people about my condition that led to additional stress. 

DOCTORS DIDN'T CARE

Phoning up the doctors was like having a conversation with an automated voice recording. "Rest, drink water, take standard painkillers". All the stuff I could read in a 20 second search on google. I got sick of explaining that you can only take standard painkillers for a certain number of days stated on the instructions. Eventually I just gave up and suffered in silence.

FRIENDS DIDN'T CARE

As with work not "looking ill" people just assume that nothing is wrong with you. While I tried to get out and socialise as much as possible after lockdown. I was frequently cancelling plans due to feeling fine Saturday morning and feeling terrible just 8 hours later. Or going out and having to leave early with everyone demanding that I stay out.

Sitting in home on Saturday night during lockdown knowing that everyone else is in the same boat was a lot easier that sitting at home knowing that everyone else is out enjoying themselves.  

SOCIAL MEDIA

Typically it was regularly flooded with conspiracy theories, anti lockdown and anti vaccination garbage. 

Whenever I mentioned my experience with long covid all of these people stuck their heads in the sand and didn't even reply.

One of the biggest regrets of my adult life is not getting vaccinated sooner. Thankfully after 6 long months the symptoms went away and I could enjoy life again at the start of 2022.

CASHLESS SOCIETY - Why I'm not worried

 

Personally I think people are freaking out a bit too much. Many people on social media are envisioning a George Orwell 1984 future where the government micromanages everyone's spending. I don't believe anything of the sort will happen for several reasons.

The government already can access your earnings before you receive them, it's called tax and national insurance. They could pass laws forcing people to pay fines in the current system anyway. 

The banknotes in your wallet are only worth as much as the government says so (that people claim to mistrust so much).

Governments are usually slow and incompetent, the idea they could successfully implement a cashless society in the next few years is far fetched. It could well happen over a much longer timescale (decades). Very few places currently refuse cash, the one's I have seen that do get named and shamed on social media and people take their business elsewhere. People were making claims about a cashless society by the year 2000 in 1993. 

The Uk is issuing new King Charles banknotes, not exactly rushing in a cashless society. At the time of writing they won't be in circulation for another year. 

I have personally witnessed people going mad about a cashless society on Facebook, only to see them paying by card in the pub. Most people go cashless by choice. 

There are obvious alternatives to do transactions without the government knowing, gold, crypto, hiding money in foreign bank accounts, barter economy etc. 

The people freaking out the most about cashless are usually the same people who were predicting North Korean police states and apocalyptic depopulation back in 2020 which of course never happened. Most are getting angry instead of actually discussing workable solutions. 

The "George Orwell 1984 crowd" seem to be forgetting that there's a world of difference between the government knowing everything you do and successfully acting upon that information. CCTV coverage is everywhere and yet they won't prosecute let alone properly punish shoplifters. Even when it's a clearly identified and well known junkie doing it. The people who believe in the worse case scenarios ironically have more faith in the governments power than most peoples.  

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