Marriage is Dead

While everyone was focussed on the Domestic Abuse Bill, the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act 2020 was slipped quietly through Royal Assent on 25th June.

This is the Act that has been dubbed the No-Fault Divorce Act. Well, de facto we have had no-fault divorce for a long time, though this Act does indeed consolidate it. However, the even more substantive purpose of the Act is to make divorce unilateral. This is the key part of the Act which makes both no-fault and unilateral action clear…

“(1) Subject to section 3, either or both parties to a marriage may apply to the court for an order (a “divorce order”) which dissolves the marriage on the ground that the marriage has broken down irretrievably.”

“(3) The court dealing with an application under subsection (1) must – (a) take the statement to be conclusive evidence that the marriage has broken down irretrievably, and (b) make a divorce order.”

Admirably clear. The word “either” in (1) means that just one of the couple can apply for the divorce, simply making a statement of irretrievable breakdown. Para (3) states that the court MUST take that statement as conclusive evidence (i.e., no-fault, no reason, no evidence) and then MUST make a divorce order.

The initial order is provisional. There is a cooling-off period within the Act which, in most circumstances, will mean that a divorce is final after 26 weeks from initial application. A confirmation that the applicant wishes to proceed is required 20 weeks after initial application. The unilateral nature of the new divorce provision is reiterated at this point: “in the case of an application that is to proceed as an application by one party to the marriage only, that party has confirmed to the court that they wish the application to continue“.

The best spin one can put on this is that marriage is now pointless.

The point of a contract is to tie the two parties into an agreement which neither party can withdraw from unilaterally. This is the case whether one considers legal contracts or contracts which are “policed” by social disapprobation. Marriage, as it is now legally instantiated, is no longer a contract.

The purpose of marriage was to tie fathers into an obligation to provide for their children. The “deal” of the traditional marriage arrangement was that, in return, men acquired social status and respect and achieved security in their position as fathers with a close involvement in the lives of the children they were supporting.

The “deal” that is on the table now is a preposterous joke. It is a contrivance for a mother to continue to acquire the benefits of marriage whilst the father is given nothing: no respect, no status and no security in his fatherhood.

Whilst the best interpretation is that marriage is now pointless, the more pernicous scenario is,

  • A man gets married and has children;
  • He earns more than his wife, supporting the family;
  • The wife unilaterally applies for divorce. The husband need not have done anything wrong, and no claim that he has need be made.
  • He is obliged to leave his home, his involvement in his children’s lives is severely impaired and perhaps terminated, and he has to pay maintenance despite no longer enjoying any of the benefits of family life.

[Yes, I know not all marriages end up like that. But a huge proportion do, and a man has no means of judging beforehand whether, a few years down the road, this will be his fate. The new divorce Act can only make it more likely.]

Add to this the money syphon that is the taxation and benefit system (and public sector employment) and what we now have is institutionalised exploitation.

The truly nasty part of this contrivance is that the reality of it is kept from young men until they have gone through the above sequence of events and become enslaved.

It is a moral obligation to continue the attempt to correct this broken system, to restore balance and fairness, through argument and reason. But those who place all their faith in such docile responses have failed to learn the lessons – not just of the last 50 years – but the ongoing lessons of the current DA Bill and its spin-offs.

We are expending a great deal of effort on the back-end of this nasty process – the ejected fathers, who are the wounded in this conflict. We have foolishly been trying to build an army out of the already wounded. The army must be built out of the still-whole: young men.

The only card that men have to play is to withdraw cooperation. One aspect of this is “marriage strike”. The mantra for young men should become,

  • No Marriage
  • No Cohab
  • No Babies

Let the old belligerents screech about young men “lacking commitment” until they are blue in the face. An effective withdrawal will be terminated ultimately by young women when they are brought to realise what they have done. Deeds, not words – ha!

In case there is any misunderstanding, let me clarify. I am in favour of marriage. I am married myself. My relationship with my wife started 45 years ago when the world was a different place. But what is on the table now is not marriage but a trap in the name of marriage. People who go on strike want to work, but striking is the workers’ only weapon.

The system has created a process for extracting resources from men without giving anything back in return. Reject it.

19 thoughts on “Marriage is Dead

  1. Sean

    Feminists trumpeted political separatism in the 1970’s in my home town, to my personal recollection. The Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group, (leading figure, still active today, Sheila Jeffreys,) proposed the establishment of Women Only Communes. Members would eschew all contact with men; not only in their personal lives, but in employment and commerce too. Mothers reportedly gave up their own sons, in order to qualify for entry. There is testimony about this in a BBC documentary called “Lefties, Angry Women,” which can be seen on Youtube. One can also see it in archives of the feminist magazine Spare Rib.
    I find it deeply ironic that sex segregation, seen long ago as liberating for women, is now simple self- protection for today’s young men. Manifesting as MGTOW.
    And I think this history needs much more attention. We shouldn’t entertain any notion the motive has ever been happier, more enduring relations between men and women.

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  2. Matt B.

    It’s great to see other people saying these things…

    Without even knowing it, I became one of those, “Men Going Their Own Way” types. After seeing what’s been going on with other men in my life all these years I realized, one day, that it doesn’t matter how respectful, romantic, or how much care I show a woman, it’s all expected and taken for granted. We want validation, or appreciation, for what we do for them, but it’s a rare thing indeed anymore to receive that treatment. (we are not entitled to expect anything from them) They only look at everything you aren’t, or how we fail, and keep score. I have watched feminism turn women into creatures I cannot even look at anymore without feeling great sadness. I don’t even feel attracted to them anymore, which is so defeating and removes any sense of purpose from my life. I decided (yes, a conscious decision) to become a drug addict. I am a major weed-head now because, why effing bother?! They are all toxic and hateful. Doesn’t help that I have high-function autism and PTSD from childhood abuse (which is why i express myself the way i do, so bear with me please). I am avoided like I have COVID-19 because I cannot communicate just like everyone else. (the social world looks very different to me than it does to most others) I cannot begin to say how hard I tried to fight my social disability, went SO FAR outside of my comfort zone, and it was *never* appreciated, it was just never enough…

    I was a romantic at heart that just wanted the dream, a wife, my soulmate!, who I loved and loved me back. It is literally the only thing I ever wanted from this life; my only dream. I had to drop it about five years ago. I truly feel like I died that day a little. Every woman I meet just seems to want to use or punish me for something. And to make it worse, the general level of maturity in this world has dropped so there is no more benefit-of-the-doubt, empathy, or understanding for the worlds perceived enemies. And thank you to feminism, *we are all the enemies*; all of us. The true irony for me is, women talk about toxic masculinity, like it’s something we are all guilty of, but those who do not perpetrate it are often victims of it. I have PTSD because a nasty little boy in grade school, who’s father AND mother abused him, decided to take it out on me for years. Think about that…

    I am not trying to be dramatic here, only earnest. Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to get high and find other worlds that may be less real, but Christ are they more pleasant places to be.

    *Young men, be advised. Other women are not your mother and you owe them nothing, they owe you nothing, and you must find your own sense of meaning independent from women. Our God-given (my belief) companions have turned on us.

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  3. Angelo Agathangelou

    Technocratic Population Control ‘Agenda 21’ In Effect.

    …Men love their children. This reality confounds those who wish to denigrate men. What to do? Let’s make it so that boys grow up knowing that >>>’The “deal” that is on the table now is a preposterous joke. It is a contrivance for a mother to continue to acquire the benefits of marriage whilst the father is given nothing: no respect, no status and no security in his fatherhood.'<<< …to adjust their attitude and create the absent fathers that we can trash all day long. That'll not only put a spanner in the baby making factory works, it will perpetuate the broken fragmented dependent society conducive of big Marxist government.

    Say what you like, …the fuckers are way more effective than the MHRM. https://youtu.be/cvHZUalRQvU

    Reply
  4. Clay Robertson

    Hypergamy will never allow marriage to be attractive again and so be it. Women are the ‘protected gender’ anyway. Make it on your own baby! If you can, as I will not help you in the slightest. Not opening doors, Helpling you lift heavy things or change your flat tire ever again!
    Please don’t dare to complain either ladies; you asked for this…

    Reply
    1. Michael McVeigh

      Clay, I’m not sure women did ask for this, although they passively agreed while feminist lobbying did its evil.

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      1. Ms. Andry

        Michael, its semantics. Women, by and large, remaining silent or indifferent in the face of sheer lunacy (of global proportion) that insidiously harms their sons, brothers and fathers is the kind of complicity that is almost unforgivable. Just how many men have you met whose “women in their lives” have shown them a meaningful sense of anti-feminist concern or solidarity? I weep for the boys — and I’ll gladly M#@$*F&@! each and every feminist that dares bathe in those tears!!

        I’m not even in the “West” and yet what I see around me is appalling — which has caused me to seriously revise my outlook towards the female. I have a mother and three sisters, and while they do not qualify as radical “kill all men” feminists, they do certainly entertain the impudence of its male-denigrating attitudes. For decades, I believed my estranged father was a dead-beat dad, but now I know better and that shit ain’t happening to another if I can help it! So, yes, in many ways, “passiveness” is indeed asking for something (to happen).

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  5. Nick Langford

    You been reading Lysistrata?
    An alternative scenario is: wife marries wealthy controlling husband and abandons career to run a home, raise children, etc.
    Wife falls seriously ill or becomes disabled. Husband gets bored, divorces her unilaterally, kicks her out, sells house, and squanders the proceeds.
    Ex wife is left impoverished with no way to earn a living and very vulnerable.
    Or: controlling husband initiates divorce but does not complete, and holds it over the wife as a threat.
    There are many scenarios in which either spouse can be hugely disadvantaged, with their right to defend the divorce now removed.
    A possible reason this has come about is the introduction of same-sex marriage. In same-sex divorce, adultery cannot be used as one of the “facts” by which irretrievable breakdown is proved because of the impossibility of re-defining adultery so that it matches all possible combinations.
    This creates a difference between same-sex and opposite-sex divorce which the equality warriors deem unacceptable. One option was to remove adultery as a fact, leaving “unreasonable behaviour” and desertion, but the easiest option is to remove fault entirely. This is possibly why the very sensible measure of simply reducing the minimum delays in separation-based divorce to match the Scottish model (i.e. 2 and 5 years to 1 and 2) was rejected.
    The excuse for no-fault divorce is that it reduces conflict, but only about 9% of divorces are high conflict, and conflict usually emerges later, in the disputes over children and finances. The obsessive zealotry with which campaigners such as Liz Trinder have pursued no-fault divorce shows that this means far more to them than the reduction of conflict. This is short-hold marriage, a major step on the road to the abolition of marriage, that nasty old-fashioned, oppressive, patriarchal, exploitative institution.

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    1. William Collins Post author

      Yes, the sex-reversed cases can and will happen. So the legal arrangement now known as “marriage” no longer fulfils the requirements of either sex. So why bother with it? You can merely add women to the strike action. The snag to setting up an alternative arrangement is that what is required is a contract which is binding, either legally or via compelling social convention. The legislature is not listening and I’ve no idea how to accomplish the change via mass public opinion….except by painful illustration of what happens when meaningful relationships and procreation diminish to the point that what has happened can no longer be ignored.

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    2. Wisemanner

      “An alternative scenario is: wife marries wealthy controlling husband and abandons career to run a home, raise children, etc.
      Wife falls seriously ill or becomes disabled. Husband gets bored, divorces her unilaterally, kicks her out, sells house, and squanders the proceeds.
      Ex wife is left impoverished with no way to earn a living and very vulnerable..”

      You obviously have no idea how the system works. The husband cannot “kick her out”. The “state” as Mike Buchanan calls it (I would blame the misandry of male white knight lawmakers), have ensured the wife’s requirements regarding housing always come first, even when it is she who has destroyed the marriage. In the above scenario, it is the husband who has to leave the house. Also, it is the wife who gets first call on the rest of the husband’s wealth, her needs having priority. The husband, meanwhile, is left with whatever remains, has to build up his wealth again, and, in the meantime, may have to live in a cheap hotel with a laptop (actual case heard of!).

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    3. Logan

      “An alternative scenario is: wife marries wealthy controlling husband and abandons career to run a home, raise children, etc.
      Wife falls seriously ill or becomes disabled. Husband gets bored, divorces her unilaterally, kicks her out, sells house, and squanders the proceeds.
      Ex wife is left impoverished with no way to earn a living and very vulnerable.
      Or: controlling husband initiates divorce but does not complete, and holds it over the wife as a threat.”

      100% impossible in most Western countries. The scenario above simply cannot happen in UK divorce courts. Doesn’t. Can’t. Won’t. In ALL UK divorces the starting point is what the woman needs (sorry, ‘best interests of the child’, except when the woman wants things that aren’t in the child’s interest then courts will show flexibility), the only question is how much the courts can extract from the husband and their reasoning for doing so – all the things you listed above will become ‘faults’ that he will pay for – even in a society with no fault divorce. California has had no fault divorce for decades, and the de-facto law is – as always – the rules apply to men only. Woman cheats = ‘no fault’. Man cheats = ‘you have to pay extra’.

      That said, I don’t think there will be a marriage strike. You’re fighting biology there. Marriage will go on, and women will go on benefiting from sexist laws they pretend to be unaware of, and if anyone speaks up about he unfair laws they will be branded misogynists and slapped down by the well-funded women’s groups who both make the laws and shape the media narrative around them.

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  6. Wisemanner

    And the entire process, which has been going on for several decades, and in which every change has been to the benefit of the wife, has been done largely by male politicians – it could certainly not have been done if they had opposed it. Indeed, the latest move was by Gawke who rode to the rescue of the damsel in distress simply because she did not want to have to wait to finalise her divorce as numerous other women had had to do.

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  7. Tony

    Marriage has been dead for a while, it’s just now the overpowering stench has caused society to finally bury it.

    “The truly nasty part of this contrivance is that the reality of it is kept from young men until they have gone through the above sequence of events and become enslaved. ”

    That’s our role, the walking wounded need to enlighten instead being silent. My son 14 says he wishes to adopt and never get married so the Gen Zed’s are learning.

    Buckmaster Fuller is the man for the job, don’t try to fix the unfixable, start afresh, Marriage 2.0 using a set of principles that do work. Put it on and they will turn up…. hence TRADWIVES,

    Reply
    1. Ms. Andry

      I fully agree that it is dutiful to enlighten the youngsters. Common sense dictates it as much as it requires slapping ruthless checkmates against the vicious tactics by the feminazi. In particular, one of the insidious tricks feminists have used to undermine fatherhood is the routine media focus on male sexual predators of children. This cultivates the sick notion that men are generally untrustworthy around kids, compounding the difficulty for a single man to adopt a child. So, routinely discuss female sexual predators in blogs, social media, etc; just like big man William Collins @ http://empathygap.uk/?p=1993, Canadian CRC @ https://canadiancrc.com/Female_Sex_Offenders-Female_Sexual_Predators_awareness.aspx , etc. It’s quite elementary really, keep messing with mine and I will mess yours up…

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  8. Carl Orsborn

    You assert that marriage is now pointless, yet the remainder of your piece contradicts the assertion; marriage is pointless only to a certain ill-favoured class of people.

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  9. Mael

    “Let the old beligerents screech about young men “lacking commitment” until they are blue in the face. An effective withdrawal will be terminated ultimately by young women when they are brought to realise what they have done. ”

    I am not sure of that. When we look at South Korea and Japan, media and gouvernement seem to attribute the decline in marriage and child birth to women not willing to because society and men are sexist. They seem to refuse to acknowledge that men are massively disengaging from society. At best, it is the mantra “men run away from theirs responsibilities”. So I really doubt that our western societies will go through another road and will not keep blaming men and trying to please women.

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  10. Nigel Johnson

    I agree with the idea of a marriage strike. As you say in effect the contract had already been broken, as evidenced by the sheer surprise when that woman was told she’d have to wait till her separation had continued for the required couple of years. The issue being not that she couldn’t divorce but that she could, but not as quickly as she wanted.
    I must admit to being far more concerned about the momentum towards creating “common law” marriage in order to “protect” women who have been cohabiting. I wonder if the tactic there might be to point out that these days in the under 35s generally the female is slightly ahead on pay and assets.
    At least it is clear now that the name of the game has nothing to do with any positive thoughts towards a husband.

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    1. William Collins Post author

      I agree re cohabitation, which is why my short-hand “marriage strike” actually means “no marriage, no cohabitation, no babies”. The latter is crucial because “possession” of a child is what drives greater benefits to the mother (see my last post).

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    2. Michael McVeigh

      Yes, Nigel, I believe that in the Netherlands a man who has co-habitated for a few years has the same legal responsibilities as if he had married her.

      Reply

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