"If marriage were actually good for women, they'd have taken it away from us long ago."
Someone said that to me once, and I still can't get it out of my head.
When I shared the line on Facebook, the men lost their minds in the comments. The women? They responded calmly, thoughtfully — almost like they already knew.
As a lesbian, I'd only add one thing: the moment women actually wanted to marry other women, they suddenly did try to take it away…
The unpaid maid
There's an old saying that marriage is the institution that lets even the poorest man have a servant for free.
When I said that to my ex-husband — pointing at our own marriage and the wildly uneven way we split the invisible labor — he genuinely didn't understand what I meant. To him it was simply natural that his wife took care of him.
He was also that classic type of man who, after I told him I wanted a divorce, toured every friend and relative we had, playing the shocked victim, insisting my decision "came out of nowhere."
Just one little statistic
Married men live longer than single men. Single women live longer than married women.
When a man gets married, his health tends to improve. When a woman gets married, hers tends to decline.
Make of that what you will…
"You'd do it anyway"
When I confronted my then-fiancé about the fact that I did every single bit of housework, he actually said:
"But you'd do it all anyway — you washed, cooked and cleaned when you lived alone too…"
Thankfully, we never made it to the altar.
The words that slipped out
We were driving to my in-laws' place — my ex-husband, our three kids and me — when we passed a wedding party in one of the villages. As we drew level with the bride, she looked over at me and smiled.
And I thought: "Don't do it. You're about to ruin your life."
Then I noticed my husband glaring at me, the kids gone silent — and realized I'd said it out loud.
I still think about that smiling bride sometimes. I can only hope her marriage turned out nothing like mine.
Yes, I am
Back when I was still married, Mr. Wonderful was watching the evening news one night and started muttering about kids and the state of education. I was doing the dishes while he lectured, and when I'd had enough, I spoke up: "Well, as a single mother, I think…"
He looked baffled and mumbled that I wasn't a single mother.
I looked him dead in the eye and told him that yes, unfortunately I was — and that on top of everything else, I had to put up with him too.
That was the exact moment it fully crystallized in my mind that we'd be better off without him. A year later I gathered up the kids, the dog, the cat, the guinea pig — and we've been happily living "dad-free" ever since.
Clarity, after the fact
After the divorce, my ex-husband told me he should have known I wasn't good "wife material," because I'd refused to take his last name.
I told him I should have known I couldn't expect anything from him as a husband either — because the whole thing reminded me of how, back in the day, enslaved people in America were forced to take their masters' surnames.
If it were easy…
I'll add just one thing: if running a household and staying home with the kids were actually easy, men would be lining up to do it.
The part nobody warns you about
I've had the dubious privilege of watching several friends' boyfriends transform the moment they became husbands. Every one of them dialed it back — the help, the compliments, the little attentions, the effort they used to make.
Because why should a man keep trying once he's already "won" the woman?
That's exactly why I never married my partner. And even though we've been together for 16 years now, to this day I'm still the only woman in our friend group who isn't financially dependent, who cooks with her partner every day, and who still gets flowers "just because" — even when it isn't her birthday.
Why do married men live longer while married women don't?
According to the article, marriage tends to improve a man's health while it can worsen a woman's. The writer offers this as an observation and leaves readers to draw their own conclusions.
Why does the author refer to marriage as an "unpaid maid" arrangement?
She's echoing an old saying that marriage lets even the poorest man have a servant for free — a nod to how the household and emotional labor in her marriage fell almost entirely on her.
Why did she never marry her current partner?
After watching friends' partners stop making an effort once they married, she deliberately chose not to. Sixteen years in, she credits that decision with a relationship that still feels equal and attentive.
Is this article against marriage in general?
It's one woman's personal, often blunt reflection based on her own experiences and observations, not a universal verdict. It questions unequal expectations within marriage rather than commitment itself.
