Speaker 1: You see it everywhere now. Men in their thirties, forties,
Speaker 1: even fifties, successful, established everything going for them, and they're
Speaker 1: walking away from marriage like it's radioactive. Not because they
Speaker 1: can't find partners, not because they're broken, but because they've
Speaker 1: done the math, and the math is terrifying. Fifty six
Speaker 1: percent divorce rate, that's the number they throw at you.
Speaker 1: But that's the polite number, the one that lets everyone
Speaker 1: sleep at night. The real number when you count the
Speaker 1: couples who stay together for the kids, for the mortgage,
Speaker 1: for the health insurance, for the simple fact that starting
Speaker 1: over at fifty feels like death, that number hits seventy
Speaker 1: maybe seventy five percent. Three out of four marriages are
Speaker 1: either dead or dying, and men are finally waking up
Speaker 1: to what that means. You want to know why men
Speaker 1: don't want to get married anymore, Because they're not stupid.
Speaker 1: They see their friends getting destroyed in family court. They
Speaker 1: see their fathers working until they die to pay for
Speaker 1: families they're not allowed to see. They see the game,
Speaker 1: and they're choosing not to play. Not because they hate women,
Speaker 1: not because they can't commit, but because the risk to
Speaker 1: reward ratio is so catastrophically bad that only a fool
Speaker 1: would sign that contract without thinking twice. Here's the paradox
Speaker 1: that should terrify you. Eighty six percent of divorce people
Speaker 1: remarry within five years. Eighty six percent. Think about that.
Speaker 1: These people just went through emotional hell, financial destruction, watch
Speaker 1: their children get torn between two homes, and what do
Speaker 1: they do? They line up to do it again, like
Speaker 1: abuse victims returning to their abuser, Like gamblers who just
Speaker 1: lost everything, running back to the casino with their last paycheck.
Speaker 1: And they all say the same thing. This time it's different,
Speaker 1: the most expensive lie in human history. This time it's different.
Speaker 1: But it's not different. It's the same game with a
Speaker 1: different player, the same contract with a different signature, the
Speaker 1: same delusion with a different face. And men are starting
Speaker 1: to realize that maybe the problem isn't finding the right person.
Speaker 1: Maybe the problem is the game itself. The psychology behind
Speaker 1: this is fascinating, disturbing. We're biologically programmed to pair bond.
Speaker 1: Society conditions us from birth that marriage equals success, that
Speaker 1: bachelor equals failure. Your mother asks when you're getting married.
Speaker 1: Your friends post their wedding photos like they've won the Olympics.
Speaker 1: Every movie ends with a wedding, like it's the finish
Speaker 1: line instead of the starting gun. And so we keep playing,
Speaker 1: keep losing, keep playing again, like rats hitting the lever
Speaker 1: for cocaine until they die. But men are starting to
Speaker 1: break the programming. They're looking at marriage not through the
Speaker 1: lens of romance, but through the lens of contract law.
Speaker 1: And when you examine marriage as a contract, when you
Speaker 1: strip away the flowers and the music and the promises
Speaker 1: of forever, what you're left with is the worst business
Speaker 1: deal any man could possibly sign. You're essentially betting half
Speaker 1: your assets and your future income that your feelings and
Speaker 1: more importantly, her feelings will never change. In what other
Speaker 1: area of life would you make that bet. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about something that makes everyone uncomfortable, money and relationships. The
Speaker 1: immediate reaction is to scream about gold diggers, about women
Speaker 1: who only want resources, about the corruption of pure love
Speaker 1: by filthy economics. But that's childish thinking. Every relationship is
Speaker 1: an exchange of value, every single one, and pretending otherwise
Speaker 1: is how you end up broken, bitter. Look at the
Speaker 1: obvious example old a wealthy man with a younger, beautiful woman.
Speaker 1: Everyone points and whispers gold Digger, like they've discovered some scandal.
Speaker 1: But what they're missing is the honesty of that exchange.
Speaker 1: He brings resources, stability, experience, She brings youth, beauty, energy.
Speaker 1: Both parties know exactly what they're trading. There's more honesty
Speaker 1: in that arrangement than in most love marriages, where people
Speaker 1: pretend money doesn't matter while secretly keeping score. The problem
Speaker 1: isn't the exchange. The problem is the delusion. The problem
Speaker 1: is when that older man thinks she loves him for
Speaker 1: his personality, when he thinks his money isn't a factor,
Speaker 1: when he believes the perform moments instead of recognizing the transaction.
Speaker 1: At least, prostitution is honest. You know what you're buying
Speaker 1: and what you're selling. But marriage, marriage pretends to be
Speaker 1: about love while being fundamentally about resources, and that disconnect
Speaker 1: is where men get destroyed. Because here's what women understand
Speaker 1: that men don't love is both emotional and economic. It
Speaker 1: always has been throughout history. Marriage was primarily an economic institution.
Speaker 1: Love marriages are a modern invention, barely one hundred years old.
Speaker 1: And we're seeing now that maybe our ancestors weren't stupid.
Speaker 1: Maybe they understood that when you mix feelings with finances,
Speaker 1: when you pretend economics don't matter in romance, you create
Speaker 1: a system where someone's getting played, and in modern marriage,
Speaker 1: that someone is usually the man with resources. Women aren't
Speaker 1: gold diggers for considering resources. They're rational, they're strategic. They
Speaker 1: understand that feelings fade, but bills don't. They understand that
Speaker 1: love doesn't pay for children's education or medical emergencies. They
Speaker 1: understand what men are only now beginning to grasp. Marriage
Speaker 1: is an economic contract dressed up as a romantic comedy.
Speaker 1: And if you sign that contract thinking it's about love,
Speaker 1: you're the mark in someone else's con game. A prenup
Speaker 1: the word that kills romance faster than admitting you have herpes.
Speaker 1: But let's be clear about what a prenup actually is.
Speaker 1: Is not planning for divorce, is acknowledging reality. Marriage is
Speaker 1: three things, simultaneously, spiritual, social, and legal. The spiritual is
Speaker 1: between you and whatever you believe in. The social is
Speaker 1: the party and the recognition. But the legal that's a
Speaker 1: binding contract with the state, and most people sign it
Speaker 1: without reading the terms. You know what's in that contract
Speaker 1: you're signing. Neither do most grooms. They're standing there in
Speaker 1: their rented tuxedo, thinking about honeymoon sex while signing a
Speaker 1: document that gives the government control over their financial future.
Speaker 1: The laws governing your marriage can change at any moment.
Speaker 1: Tax laws, alimony laws, custody laws. The contract you signed
Speaker 1: into twenty ten isn't the same contract you're bound to
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four. The government can rewrite the rules
Speaker 1: while you're playing the game, and you agree to this.
Speaker 1: You signed up for this. A prenup is simply saying
Speaker 1: we'll write our own rules instead of letting the state decide.
Speaker 1: It's taking control of your own future instead of leaving
Speaker 1: it to judges and lawyers who don't know you, don't
Speaker 1: care about you, and definitely don't love you. It's the
Speaker 1: most adult conversation two people can have, and most people
Speaker 1: are too childish to have it. The basic model is simple,
Speaker 1: yours mine and ours. What you bring in stays yours,
Speaker 1: What I bring in stays mine. What we build together
Speaker 1: we share clear, clean, fair. But even this simple conversation
Speaker 1: is too much for most couples. They'd rather sign a
Speaker 1: blank check to the state than have an uncomfortable conversation
Speaker 1: about money. They'd rather risk everything than admit that there
Speaker 1: forever might have an expiration date. People resist prenups like
Speaker 1: they're being asked to plan their own funeral. It feels
Speaker 1: like admitting defeat before the game starts. It feels like
Speaker 1: betting against your own happiness. But that's emotional thinking, not
Speaker 1: logical thinking. You buy life insurance without planning to die.
Speaker 1: You wear a seat belt without planning to crash. You
Speaker 1: save money without planning to be unemployed. A prenup is
Speaker 1: just another form of insurance, except this one protects you
Speaker 1: from something with a seventy five percent failure rate. The
Speaker 1: resistance comes from the fantasy, the fantasy that your love
Speaker 1: is different, that your relationship is special, that statistics apply
Speaker 1: to other people, not to you. It's the same delusion
Speaker 1: that makes people think they'll win the lottery or that
Speaker 1: they're above average drivers. Everyone thinks they're the exception, nobody
Speaker 1: thinks they're the rule. But mathematics doesn't care about your feelings.
Speaker 1: Probability doesn't respect your love story. Here's what a prenup
Speaker 1: actually does. It forces you to have the conversations that
Speaker 1: most couples avoid until it's too late. How will we
Speaker 1: handle money? What happens if one of us stops working,
Speaker 1: What if someone inherits wealth, if someone starts a business,
Speaker 1: What if God forbid we fall out of love. These
Speaker 1: aren't negative conversations. They are adult conversations, and if you
Speaker 1: can't have them, you're not ready for marriage. The best
Speaker 1: marriages are built on radical honesty about uncomfortable truths about money,
Speaker 1: about expectations, about what happens when the feelings fade, because
Speaker 1: feelings always fade. That chemical cocktail in your brain that
Speaker 1: makes you stupid with love it has a shelf life
Speaker 1: eighteen months to four years, depending on the research. After that,
Speaker 1: you're left with partnership compatibility and whatever agreement you've built.
Speaker 1: And if you haven't built an agreement, if you've just
Speaker 1: been riding the chemical high, you're about to discover what
Speaker 1: sixty percent of married people discover. Love isn't enough. Here's
Speaker 1: the counterintuitive truth. Prenups don't kill romance. They enhance it
Speaker 1: because real romance isn't about blind trust, it's about conscious choice.
Speaker 1: When you have a prenup, when you've protected both parties
Speaker 1: from the worst case scenario, something magical happens, you stay
Speaker 1: because you want to, not because you have to. You're
Speaker 1: not trapped by economics, you're not held hostage by legal complications.
Speaker 1: You're there by choice every single day. That's more romantic
Speaker 1: than any fairy tale. Knowing someone could leave easily but
Speaker 1: chooses to stay. That's real love. Knowing you could leave
Speaker 1: but you don't want to. That's actual commitment, not the
Speaker 1: forced commitment of being too financially entangled to escape, but
Speaker 1: the voluntary commitment of two people who wake up every
Speaker 1: day and choose each other again. A good pre nup
Speaker 1: protects both parties dignity. It says if this ends, we'll
Speaker 1: both walk away whole. It says I care enough about
Speaker 1: you to ensure you're protected, even from me. It says
Speaker 1: we're entering this as equals, and we'll leave as equals
Speaker 1: if we must. That's not planning for failure. That's respecting
Speaker 1: each other enough to ensure that even failure won't destroy
Speaker 1: either of you. But most people can't see this. They're
Speaker 1: so caught up in the performance of romance that they
Speaker 1: can't see the reality of partnership. They're so invested in
Speaker 1: the wedding that they feel get about the marriage. They're
Speaker 1: so focused on the beginning that they can't plan for
Speaker 1: the potential end, and so they sign that state contract,
Speaker 1: that blank check, that agreement to let strangers decide their future,
Speaker 1: all because having an adult conversation feels less romantic than
Speaker 1: pretending problems don't exist. Here's what nobody talks about. The
Speaker 1: men who stay in dead marriages because leaving would mean
Speaker 1: financial suicide. They're the walking dead, going through the motions,
Speaker 1: staying for the kids, staying for the house, staying because
Speaker 1: starting over at forty five with half their assets means
Speaker 1: they'll never retire. These men aren't counted in divorce statistics,
Speaker 1: but their casualty is just the same. You see them
Speaker 1: everywhere once you know what to look for. The guy
Speaker 1: who works late every night, not because he loves his job,
Speaker 1: but because going home feels like entering a prison. The
Speaker 1: man who's developed a drinking problem, not because he's an alcoholic,
Speaker 1: but because it's the only way he can tolerate his life.
Speaker 1: The husband who's on antidepressants not because he's clinically depressed,
Speaker 1: but because he's trapped in a situation that would make
Speaker 1: any one depressed. These men signed up for partnership and
Speaker 1: got servitude. They signed up for love and got obligation.
Speaker 1: They signed up for intimacy and got rejection, and they
Speaker 1: can't leave because leaving would mean losing everything they've worked for,
Speaker 1: their children, their home, their retirement, their future. So they
Speaker 1: stay dying a little more each day, counting the years
Speaker 1: until the kids are grown, until they can finally escape
Speaker 1: without losing everything. And society calls these men successful because
Speaker 1: they're still married. Society points to them as examples of
Speaker 1: commitment of duty, of what real men do. But what
Speaker 1: society doesn't see is the price these men pay. The
Speaker 1: dreams they've abandoned, the happiness they've sacrificed, the slow death
Speaker 1: of their spirit as they realize they're not partners but
Speaker 1: prisoners in their own lives. Men are doing the calculation now,
Speaker 1: and the numbers are brutal. Take your net worth, cut
Speaker 1: it in half. That's your divorce cost minimum. Now add
Speaker 1: legal fees. Now, add alimony, now, add child support. Now,
Speaker 1: add the therapy, the lost productivity, the emotional devastation of
Speaker 1: losing your children half the time. Now compare that to
Speaker 1: the benefits of modern marriage. For men. Sex you can
Speaker 1: get that without marriage. Companionship you can get that without marriage. Children.
Speaker 1: Increasingly you can have those without marriage too. What exactly
Speaker 1: is marriage offering men that justifies this risk? The answer
Speaker 1: used to be clear, social acceptance, career advancement, legitimate children,
Speaker 1: regular sex, domestic support. But every one of these benefits
Speaker 1: has been deconstructed. Society accepts bachelors now, career discrimination against
Speaker 1: single men is illegal, sex is more available outside marriage
Speaker 1: than in it for most men, and domestic support. Most
Speaker 1: modern marriage is are dual income, with both parties too
Speaker 1: exhausted to support anyone. So what's left? What's the value
Speaker 1: proposition of marriage for men in twenty twenty four? Love
Speaker 1: you can love without contract. Commit you can commit without
Speaker 1: government involvement. Partnership you can partner without legal entanglement. The
Speaker 1: only thing marriage offers that you can't get elsewhere is
Speaker 1: the opportunity to lose half your assets and access to
Speaker 1: your children when it fails, And men are starting to
Speaker 1: realize that's not a benefit, that's a threat. The response
Speaker 1: to this is always the same. You're bitter, you're hurt,
Speaker 1: you've been damaged by a bad relationship. But look at
Speaker 1: the men walking away from marriage. They're not all divorced,
Speaker 1: many have never been married. They're not all bitter, many
Speaker 1: are happy, successful, thriving. They're not damaged. They're logical. They've
Speaker 1: looked at the contract, evaluated the terms, and decided not
Speaker 1: to sign. That's not emotional damage. That's financial literacy. Women
Speaker 1: will read this and feel attacked. They'll say it's misogynistic,
Speaker 1: that it's reducing marriage to economics, that it's destroying romance.
Speaker 1: But asking men to ignore financial reality in the name
Speaker 1: of romance is exactly how they end up destroyed. It's
Speaker 1: like asking someone to invest their life savings without looking
Speaker 1: at the terms, because true investors have fail that's not romance.
Speaker 1: That's exploitation. The comfortable lie is that marriage is about love,
Speaker 1: and love conquers all. The uncomfortable truth is that marriage
Speaker 1: is a legal contract with severe financial penalties for failure,
Speaker 1: and failure is statistically probable. The comfortable lie is that
Speaker 1: your marriage will be different. The uncomfortable truth is that
Speaker 1: everyone who got divorce thought the same thing. The comfortable
Speaker 1: lie is that planning for failure causes failure. The uncomfortable
Speaker 1: truth is that failing to plan is planning to fail.
Speaker 1: Men aren't avoiding marriage because they can't love. They're avoiding
Speaker 1: it because they can love without signing a contract that
Speaker 1: puts everything they've built at risk. They're not commitment phobic,
Speaker 1: their risk aware. They're not Peter Pan's refusing to grow up.
Speaker 1: There are adults who've learned to read contracts before signing them,
Speaker 1: and what they're reading in the marriage contract is making
Speaker 1: them walk away. The shame tactics don't work anymore. Calling
Speaker 1: men boys for not marrying doesn't work when those boys
Speaker 1: are building empires while married men are getting destroyed in
Speaker 1: divorce court. Saying they're missing out doesn't work when they
Speaker 1: see their married friends miserable and trapped. Threatening them with
Speaker 1: lonely old age doesn't work when they see divorced men
Speaker 1: dying alone. Anyway, just Broker. The new model emerging isn't
Speaker 1: about avoiding relationships, it's about avoiding legal entanglement. Men are
Speaker 1: still dating, still loving, still committing. They're just not signing
Speaker 1: the contract. They're keeping their assets separate. They're maintaining their
Speaker 1: own spaces. They're protecting their futures while still building partnerships.
Speaker 1: And despite what traditional society says, many are thriving. They're
Speaker 1: having relationships on their terms, partnerships without legal risk, love
Speaker 1: without financial exposure, even children increasingly without marriage. The system
Speaker 1: that used to force men into marriage through social pressure
Speaker 1: is breaking down, and without that pressure, men are asking
Speaker 1: a simple question, what's in it for me? And they're
Speaker 1: not finding a good answer. This isn't celebration or condemnation.
Speaker 1: It's observation. The marriage rate is plummeting, the average age
Speaker 1: of first men marriage is climbing. More men are choosing
Speaker 1: to stay single permanently, And instead of asking why men
Speaker 1: are broken, maybe we should ask why the institution of
Speaker 1: marriage is so broken that rational men are walking away
Speaker 1: from it. Because here's the brutal truth nobody wants to
Speaker 1: say out loud. Modern marriage is a bad deal for
Speaker 1: men with resources. It's a great deal for men with
Speaker 1: nothing to lose and women with everything to gain. But
Speaker 1: for successful men, men who've built something, men who have
Speaker 1: assets to protect, marriage is Russian roulette with half your
Speaker 1: net worth as the bullet. If you're still going to
Speaker 1: get married, if you're still going to take that risk,
Speaker 1: at least do it with your eyes open. Have the
Speaker 1: prenup conversation, not the superficial one where you mention it
Speaker 1: and then cave when she cries, the real one, the
Speaker 1: one where you lay out exactly what you're risking and
Speaker 1: exactly how you'll protect both of you if it fails,
Speaker 1: because it might fail, no matter how much you love
Speaker 1: each other now, it might fail. And if you can't
Speaker 1: have that conversation, if you can't face that possibility, you're
Speaker 1: not ready for marriage. You're ready for a wedding, which
Speaker 1: is a very different thing. You're ready for the performance,
Speaker 1: not the partnership. You're ready for the fantasy, not the reality.
Speaker 1: The couples who make it the ones who beat the odds.
Speaker 1: They're the ones who can talk about money without fighting,
Speaker 1: who can plan for contingencies without feeling betrayed, who can
Speaker 1: protect each other even from themselves. They're the ones who
Speaker 1: choose each other every day, not because they have to,
Speaker 1: but because they want to. And that choice is only
Speaker 1: real when leaving is actually possible. Marriage can be beautiful,
Speaker 1: it can be transformative. It can be the greatest partnership
Speaker 1: of your life. But it can also be your financial
Speaker 1: and emotional destruction. And pretending that second possibility doesn't exist
Speaker 1: doesn't make it go away. It just makes you unprepared
Speaker 1: when it arrives. Men aren't walking away from love, they're
Speaker 1: walking away from a contract that makes no sense. They're
Speaker 1: not refusing to commit, They're refusing to put their commitment
Speaker 1: in the hands of a legal system that profits from
Speaker 1: their failure. They're not avoiding women, They're avoiding a deal
Speaker 1: that only makes sense if you ignore the mathematics. Think
Speaker 1: about who profits from divorce lawyers billing hundreds of dollars
Speaker 1: per hour for fights that could be avoided, therapists treating
Speaker 1: the trauma that didn't need to happen, real estate agents
Speaker 1: selling homes that families are forced to liquidate, an entire
Speaker 1: industry built on the destruction of marriages, And you wonder
Speaker 1: why the system doesn't protect them. The family court system
Speaker 1: isn't broken. It's working exactly as designed. It's designed to
Speaker 1: extract maximum resources from broken families. It's designed to create
Speaker 1: conflict where cooperation might exist. It's designed to turn parents
Speaker 1: into adversaries, fighting over children, like property and men being
Speaker 1: Typically the higher earners are the primary targets of this
Speaker 1: extraction machine. You think the judge cares about your story.
Speaker 1: You think the lawyer fighting for your wife isn't friends
Speaker 1: with your lawyer. You think the system wants quick, clean,
Speaker 1: amicable divorces. The system wants blood, It wants fights. It
Speaker 1: wants billable hours and court fees and mandatory counseling and
Speaker 1: custody evaluations. Every complication is profit, Every conflict is revenue,
Speaker 1: and you signed up to be the product this machine processes.
Speaker 1: If this makes you angry, ask yourself why Why does
Speaker 1: men protecting themselves financially make you angry? Why does rational
Speaker 1: risk assessment in romance offend you? Why does treating marriage
Speaker 1: like the contract it is feel like betrayal? Maybe because
Speaker 1: you've been sold the same fantasy. Everyone else has, the
Speaker 1: fantasy that love conquers all, including mathematics, statistics, and contract law.
Speaker 1: But fantasy doesn't pay alimony, Fantasy doesn't fight custody battles.
Speaker 1: Fantasy doesn't rebuild after financial destruction. Reality does. And men
Speaker 1: are finally choosing reality over fantasy, even if it means
Speaker 1: walking away from an institution that wants to find manhood itself.
Speaker 1: The game has changed, The risks have multiplied, the benefits
Speaker 1: have evaporated, and men have noticed. They're not broken for notice.
Speaker 1: They're rational, they're not wrong for protecting themselves. They're smart.
Speaker 1: They're not less masculine for refusing to sign. They're more conscious.
Speaker 1: Marriage is dying, not because men won't commit, but because
Speaker 1: the institution demands too much and offers too little. Until
Speaker 1: that changes, until the contract makes sense, until the risk
Speaker 1: matches the reward, men will keep walking away. And maybe
Speaker 1: that's not a crisis. Maybe that's an evolution. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: men finally learning that their worth isn't determined by their
Speaker 1: willingness to sign a bad contract.