Why do married men live longer?

The point that married men on average live longer than their unmarried counterpart has been brought out multiple times as an argument for two different things firstly people who are pro marriage and think that the point that men are more and more opting out of institution is a bad thing and secondly as an argument pro feminism (i.e. men are stupid and need women). I think this is an interesting phenomenon and have my own theory on it.

Firstly let men clarify what I believe to be the generally accepted explanation.

Women look after their man.

I believe the generally accepted concept is that a man without a women to keep him on the straight and narrow will drink too much, eat junk food, never get any exercise, probable start smoking weed, then crack and so on. The concept being that a woman in a man life will nag him to healthiness, cook him healthy meals, keep him from going to the bar every night. I doubt this is true, just the figures suggesting that after marriage both men and women start to put on weight suggest to me that whatever benefit women bring in cleaning up their lifestyle they add in general nagging stress and pressure to earn more at work, direct or indirect.

Here is my hypothesis:

Men who get married have a reason to live.

So this is a complicated one but hear me out. There is a fundamental difference in way women and men value themselves. Women are born and taught to have an inherent basic value, as the bottleneck of reproduction women are inherently more valuable than men. They are more valued without having to do anything. Women need to know this on a base animal level. So at the point that a ship goes down they have to be willing to jump in the lifeboat and leave their husbands to die. For the survival and success of our species on base level we have needed socially and biologically to value women more than men. This is why men have always been the primary people going to war, in a generation you could lose 90% of you men and the 10% left could impregnate the women and couple of generations later your population would be thriving. Lose 90% of you women and that tribe is probable never going to recover.

So where women have an inherent value, men value themselves by what they do.  They value themselves based on your jobs, their role as a father as a husband. A man who is married is much more likely to feel in his later year that he has a purpose to live. That he need to continue to look after his wife or take care of grandchildren. A married man automatically has some default role to fill.

It’s common for a man to die shortly after retirement, this I believe is connected to a man loss of the positive self-image he derived from his job. He had a purpose he had a reason to live.

With the MGTOW movement and the grass eating males of Japan, I think this is going to be the biggest challenge that they face. If you want to live longer without getting married then you need to get a positive self-image from somewhere else, be it a cause that is bigger than you.

There always an alpha dog

There are a couple of points I would like to clear up when it come to the definition of ‘Alpha Male’ in the animal kingdom where you have a group of animals that work as a collective (usually hunting packs) you will always have an ‘Alpha’ the one in charge this could vary in gender usually dependent on the child rearing responsibilities common to that animal. But for all effective purposes  each animal would be a member of only one pack, and that pack’s ‘Alpha’ would change over time this would charge usually with the aging alpha being dethroned by a competitor.

Human are different for one reason, we exists in multiple packs during our life time.  Even during a single day you might have to function in multiple packs (work, family, past times…) these all function effectively as packs, where at one point you will have one alpha, appropriate to the situation.

Your ranking in each pack will vary.

Most Dating / PUA material has the concept of everyone becoming an Alpha male as if it’s a set of behaviors that once mastered you receive your Alpha male badge and all women are naturally attracted to you.

Then all the Alpha males can hang out together in a group and not bother talking to the Betas! Well that not really the way it works, when every you get a group together we naturally form a pecking order no matter how macho you are or how nerdy. Any group will have a alpha.

Take these made up examples:

So want a surefire way to become a Alpha male? Just join a group of people who are considerable more Beta than you. 

Joking aside I hope this helps clear up what the definition of being a Alpha male is. It’s not all the chest puffing, faking confidence, aloof arsehole. It’s about being the person that the others look to for leadership, be it through competence, intelligence  respect or more often being the guy who has taken the role and put in the effort.

There is always, always an alpha dog, even in a pack of poodles.

Dating Advice, The Makeshift Alpha Dating clinic!

Getting actually useful dating advice is not easy. Ask your friends, they’ll say whatever will cheer you up. Magazines pump out vague generalities to appeal to the largest readership possible and real world specialist that are worth a damn are rare to say the least. This is where Dr Makeshift comes in.

I’m going to do a clinic (well at least until I’m bored of it). If you take the time to fill out what is a pretty hefty survey, I will give you a honest no holes barred appraisal of your situation plus advice on what your best options are.

Why should you listen to me?

1. I’m remaining anonymous: My decision to remain anonymous gives me a lot of benefits. But the main benefit to you is I don’t have to worry about offending you, I can afford to be completely honest. I don’t need to sugar coat anything, I don’t need to worry about you screaming at me, threats of violence, so on. No real world ramification for me. Useful honest information for you.
2. You remain anonymous: Unless you specifically want to be associated with this, I’m not going to out you. Their is no reason for me to, you can check back through all the case files to see that I’m honest to my word.
3. My diagnosis is open to public scrutiny: I’m going to write a post about your situation, along with my advice. If people consider it rubbish, they can comment, Google note me, write a blog post having a go, whatever. I rarely moderate my comments, occasionally I will if I think they add nothing.
4. I’m not trying to up sell you anything:  Presently I’m doing this mainly for my own benefit and to generate interesting content. I might add some thing in the future but not at the moment. I don’t want to sell you extra counseling session, make sure you subscribe or anything. That might change. But to be honest if I think you need to see a psychologist, that going to be the first thing I say. Heck I’m not even charging for the service at all at the moment. I might add in some queue jumping options in exchange for a donation.

Wow!
First off I want to thank you for taking that amount of time and effort to really analyse my profile, obviously I’m grateful for ANY feedback but you really went the extra mile. thanks 🙂

Don – Wales

What qualifies me to give you advice?

I could say a number of things here. A lot of personal experience, my study of psychology and evolutionary biology, the point I have been active in the PUA scene for years, my need for testing, my adherence to logic and what I believe is a relatively clean lens that I see the world through. Also I did this for quite a while for a popular internet dating site.

But all this is highly subjective. I urge you to make your mind up for yourself. My writings are clear here, if you think what I say make sense then give me a shot, if you think I sound like a mad man then please don’t waste my time. Even though I have chosen to keep my identity private, my thought processes and opinions are far from it.

Go on you know you want to! What’s the worst that can happen.

Makeshift is right and he gave a good critique and I agree with him.

– Lioness

Thanks for all the advice, I’ll get to editing now!
Would you mind having another look when I’ve finished?

Shelley – Bristol

I hate paying taxes!

In the past I had no problem with taxes. I believed I was helping out my country. I was contributing to a society and I was getting a pretty good deal. I lived in a safe society, we had good roads, had a good education, if I got ill I got looked after, paid for peacekeeping missions all around the world.

My view point has drastically changed over the last couple of years.

I hate where most my taxes are going. I feel I am paying to make this society activity worse with the barrel of a gun pointed at my head to make me do it.

Now my view point has changed

• I see education as noneffective with a feminist bias.
• I see the NHS as confused and struggling under red tape.
• I see our military movement oversees as profit mongering.

But this isn’t actually the bit that drive me mad and makes me want to opt out. The bit makes me want to say fuck it, I’ll shut down my company and go live in a wood cabin somewhere is warfare and the continued support of single motherhood.

Recently the new inquiry published an article by Madeleine Schwartz that included this section:

There is nothing wrong with teenage or single motherhood. The things children need: economic livelihood, emotional support and an education, are not dependent on a nuclear family structure. … A couple cannot raise a child better than one can. Once we get rid of the idea that marriage is the privileged form of cohabitation and that women cannot raise children without the help of a man—ideas that the Left has been working to eradicate for decades—there is no reason that a teen should not be financially and emotionally assisted for her choice to have a family. The potential diffusion of the family (as the New York Times recently reported, it doesn’t look like the trends will stop anytime soon) is one of the most exciting things … since sexual liberation.

This article goes on to say:

What’s frightening about a teen mother is that her existence defies the patriarchal structure. It’s not only that teen mothers reproduce when poor, or uneducated. They haven’t conformed to the institutional model of marriage.

This is so so wrong, and completely misses the points. The problem with teen mothers, single mother or jobless couples having kids is that they cannot AFFORD them and at that point the government steps in and foots the bill. Where do they get the money? They raise taxes or get us more in debt! 

Either of these things are driving businesses to leave the UK, pushing us towards a financial meltdown, destroying worker ambition since increased pay just mean more tax.

This was best described by Chateau Heartiste:

Meanwhile, I suggest aspiring single moms who wish to truly Go Their Own Way (SGTOW?) practice what they preach and divest themselves of all male support, in whatever form. That means: no redistribution from unrelated men to single moms, no corporate welfare in the form of maternity leave or flex time or special insurance policy discounts, no government handouts predicated on number of children, no shamelessness exacerbating EBT cards, no punitive alimony or child support payouts, no affirmative action for the children of single moms. In short, no sexless drone provider beta male largesse to save single moms from a self-inflicted life of indigent misery.

The system is a mess. The sensible people with good jobs, who want children and can raise them well to be productive members of society, can’t afford them because all their money is taken in tax to help the irresponsible bad parents raise children.

The 2006 film Idiocracy explained it best in my opinion:

I understand it is not a simple solution, with governments getting voted in by giving benefits to feminist agender. It is evolutionary biology to want to protect children and to serve women. But this is leading us to a path of destruction. This is why I understand and approve of Men going their own way, the men’s right movement, herbivore men and going ghost (where you disappear from the system so that you can no longer be servant to the states).

I subscribe to the philosophy of Objectivism and would like to leave you with the famous John Galt Speech from ‘Atlas Shrugged’ by Ayn Rand. Where the productive people of the world have gone on strike and society has fallen apart.

Who is John Galt?

Sexual market value over time

Sexual Market Value (SMV) is defined as the value a person has within the sexual marketplace. It has an effect much like any market place the higher your value the higher value partner you can demand.

The interesting thing is how this varies over time and gender.

So on this graph we are rating the SMV for men and women over their lifetime. 100 is the most in demand 0 is no demand at all.

Now all these stats vary, but it should be understood that woman sexual market place value is based on reproductive value and mens are on their survival traits.

So you have this case where women start off with a very high initial value, youth bumps their SMV to the highest it will ever be (minus major plastic surgery) then it stay generally high until they hit their 30’s where they have this cliff like drop off.

Men’s SMV  is much more connected to thing like confidence, power, earning ability so on. So they start getting higher value as they get into their late 20’s.

Now this is where it gets interesting, i’m going to break it down.

I’m not breaking down the women’s side since it is so overwhelmingly connected to their looks, that it would be same  curve just higher or lower on the graph depending on how attractive they are.

However the way men act in the world massively effects their SMV, so lets look at men broken down into Alpha Males and Beta Males.

So your SMV is the price you can demand in a partner. So as you can see here some common relationships:

• The average age of marriage is around 30, where the beta maless value and the female’s value start to come in line. At this point women’s options are shrinking and getting a guy to commit is important.
• Seeing a young girl hooking up with a alpha male twice her age.
• Seeing male sex symbols in his 50’s
• Tons of Beta Males in their early 20 having real problem getting a date
• Loads of women in their 30 confused where all the good men have gone.

Now we see a more realist view of the sexual market place. This visually explains a lot of things. For example:

1. Why women in their early 20 sleep around with a lot of Alpha males then reach their 30 and are shocked that the Alpha male of the same age of them have no desire to date them. Even the Beta males that they turn their nose up at 5 years ago seem very reluctant to make any real investment in a relationship with them.

2. Why women are much more interested in marriage or anything that shows a males commitment level. A women value drop steadily through their lives so a long term commitment benefits them considerable more than a man, who’s options and value does not plummet in such a dramatic manner.

3. Note the period of time that Alpha males value remains high, This means even though they are few in number they have a lot longer time to date women at the peak of the SMV.

4. It also explains why Women dating a older man, is such a usual thing, however a women dating a younger man garners such a high level of interest. Seeing a man actual commit to a woman more than 10 years older than him, is very rare and almost unheard of if the guy has any alpha trait at all.

Attraction is NOT Logical

Recently I commented on a post in Jezebel‘s blog on a post about called ‘The Real reason why older men what to date you”.

Now the post itself could be summarized in these points:

• Older men still tend to pursue younger women
• Middle age men feel sexual invisible because younger women don’t find them so attractive
• Men lose interest in women as they get older (regardless of the mans age)
• Hollywood often cast women in their 30 as women in their 40+
• The media is de-sexualisation of women over 40

From this she concludes:

• The reason men chase younger women is to reassure themselves ‘they still have it’. It is primarily for the status rather than a real desire.
• Men are in denial that they are aging and are looking for younger women to fight this.
• The reason women use cosmetic and get plastic surgery is because they need to look young because men are looking for young women as an ego soother.

Now this to me seems like just poor logic, it is justifying after the fact. Jezebel wants the answer to be ‘Men are weak and just can’t handle a real women’ therefore she has sort out some seemingly supporting evidence and give it as ‘The real reason’.

Now I tried to add a comment, it was polite and just stated my opinion , basically a shorter version of this post. However the comment got rejected, I have no idea why. Anyway on to the comments. These where the part that motivated me to point comment like these:

A reasonable argument. Here another:

Although I think this women has a point with logic behind the reproduction stuff. The Gender politic stuff is just personal man hating.

But all this to me come done to one problem. It’s making logical argument, where logical does not come into this equation. Men are not logically picking the best mate to produce children, men are not logically looking at what Hollywood wants them to do, men are not logically picking younger women so that their authority isn’t questioned.

Men’s hind brain are telling them to seek out the youngest and most attractive mate.

Sexual attraction is based on animal instincts and possible previous life experience, NOT LOGIC. Men desires were built into us back when we were animals so that we have the strongest chance to reproduce and pass on our genes. From a evolutionary point of view breeding with the youngest most attractive women gave you a high chance of having healthy and successful children. Women would want to breed with the most successful male because that would give her the highest chance of having healthy successful children.

This is translated to our desires. Even if a man does not logical want children at all, his body is still going to tell him to be attracted to young hot women. The animal instinct that drives attraction, it does not take into consideration the women business success, the level of compliance to authority or Hollywood present trends.

This to me seems such an obvious truth that the madness of attempt to argue against it logical is just a pitiful attempt to fight the reality.