For Many Men, Marriage Is the Final Bastion of the Scoundrel

There is a certain type of roguish gentleman who, after many years of indulging in his tom cat appetites, finally decides to get married. His reason is simple: He has pissed off just about every woman on the planet and he must find refuge by marrying the only lady whom has not yet thoroughly alienated—his current girlfriend.

According to sports writer Rick Reilly, baseball slugger Barry Bonds’ short-lived reality show was a disgrace in part because for Reilly the reality show is “the last bastion of the scoundrel.” Likewise, for many men who have offended over 99% of the female race with their pestilent existence, marriage is the last sanctuary for the shit head who has stepped on so many women’s toes that he is, understandably, a marked man. Therefore, these men aren’t so much getting married as much as they are enlisting in a “witness protection program.” They are after all despised and targeted by their past female enemies for all their lies and betrayals and running out of allies they see that marriage makes a good cover as they try to blend in with mainstream society and take on a role that is antithetical to their single days as lying, predatory scoundrels.

Additionally, marriage’s well-known neutering effect on over-sexed single males makes these men less threatening and contributes, they hope, to pacifying the scorn of their former lovers.

The analogy between marriage and a witness protection program is further developed when we see that for many men marriage is their final stab at earning public respectability because they are, as married men, proclaiming to the world that they have voluntarily shackled themselves with the chains of domesticity in order that they may be spared greater punishments, the bulk of which will be exacted upon by the women whom they used and lied to for so many years.

Because it is assumed that their wives will keep them in check, their wives become, in a way, equivalent to the ankle bracelet transmitters worn by parolees who are only allowed to travel within certain parameters.  Marriage anchors man close to the home and, combined with the wife’s reliable issuing of house chores and other domestic duties, the shackled man is rendered safely tethered to his “home base” where his wife can observe him sharply to make sure he doesn’t backslide into the abhorrent behavior of his past single life.

Indeed, it is assumed that the woman married this scoundrel on the condition that he disavow his despicable past behavior and aspire to be Reformed Man.  The wife therefore in effect becomes a sort of probation officer who closely monitors all of her husband’s activities, keeping a close look at signs of recidivism—hoarding pizza under the bed, refusing to wear underwear, making surreptitious cell phone calls to former girlfriends who work as “professional dancers” by the airport.

Looking at the new strictures that Reformed Man must adhere to, it is apparent that marriage is in many ways a probationary compound for the man who is trying to turn from his reckless past and that marriage contains all the necessary constraints, which will, hopefully, protect the shit head from his past female enemies, prevent him from straying too far from the home, and monitor his post-marital behavior to insure that he is no longer the anti-social predatory single beast that was once so damaging to society.

Many men will see the above analysis of marriage as proof that their fear of marriage as a prison was right all along but what they should learn from the analogy between marriage and prison is that they are more productive, more socialized, more softened around his hard edges, and more protected, both from the outside world and from themselves by being shackled to their domestic duties. With these improvements in their lives, they have actually, within limits, attained a freedom they could never find in single life.