Почему брак кажется таким ПИ**ЕЦОМ

Go to any popular

relationship videos. There are the same warriors in the comments

. Marriage is beneficial for a man; there are

no normal girls left. If I

cheat, we will get divorced and I will lose half of what I

earned. If she cheats,

we'll get divorced too, and I'll still

lose half. And you read this and

think: "Okay, if everything [music] is so

bad, then why even get into this thing

called family and marriage?

Maybe it really is easier here with your own

movie pub? A subscription for a couple only cheats,

than to risk and then pay alimony

until retirement. My name is Dima, I'm single. I

was in a serious relationship. I

proposed and thought: "Well, this is it,

next stop, family." And then

the relationship ended. Unfortunately, not

according to my plan. I was pretty much

unraveled. There was depression, there were

antidepressants, an attempt to rebuild

myself and generally understand what happened in

my life. And while I was climbing out of this

hole, I discovered that I have a lot of

brothers in suffering - men who have

also been burned, who are also afraid of a

repeat of this situation, who also

say: "Forget this marriage, I'd rather

live for myself." In this video, I want to

talk honestly about why you

put off family and marriage. It's not about

getting married before thirty, it's not about

how it's right, but about being someone

who ruined everything themselves, who spent a long time

justifying it with circumstances, and then

saw the other side [music]. And before

we delve into culture and other

psychology, let's first carefully

sort out the numbers. Because if

you read statistics incorrectly, any

story about marriage will seem like a

failure from the start.

The phrase "eight out of ten marriages"

fail comes from simple

arithmetic. They take the number of divorces per

year, 644,000 in 2024,

divide it by the number of marriages for the same

year, 880,000, and get approximately 73%.

They round the figure, add drama to the

headline, and then

the formula goes around. Almost all unions don't survive.

The problem is that you can't read it that way.

After all, right now, marriages that

were concluded 5, 10, 20 years ago are failing, and not

just those that were concluded this year.

Year. It's more accurate to look separately at

how many people per 1,000 population

get married this year and how many get divorced. These are

two independent processes, and they can't be

separated. It's like taking all the

cars that were in accidents today,

dividing them by those that left the

showroom today, and declaring: nine out of ten

new cars are wrecked. Even though

the cars in accidents were bought 10 years ago.

Demographer Alexey Raksha, who analyzes

marriage structure and the size of the youth population,

puts the real estimate at around 55%.

Approximately every second marriage

really doesn't last.

That's a lot, it's a serious signal, but the

difference between about half and almost

all is huge. It's important to understand that you're

being sold a ready-made narrative. Marriage is almost

guaranteed failure. This narrative

is picked up by memes, shows, podcasts,

TikToks, and clips, and at some point it

begins to seem like reality. But

it's very far from reality.

I used to think that I formed my own

opinions about marriage, but then I noticed that

Over the past couple of years, videos have turned

this topic into one big genre of horror for

men. You open your feed, and after

half an hour you start to think you've understood

something important about this life. Because

the algorithms show you 33 videos about

how women are predators, how courts are

unfair, how men

end up with nothing after a divorce. The videos are different,

the speakers are different. The conclusion is one: you

can't get married. If you watch a dozen of these videos in a row

, it begins to seem like

relationships are basically structured like a

fight. Somewhere, someone is

bound to screw someone.

Women most often want to get married so that their

husband can legally

provide for them.

Then they find this cunning

woman who just takes them and

manipulates them, literally taking control of their entire lives

. Guys, be careful.

I never plan [music] to

get married. It's a one-sided deal. An

official marriage will never happen again in my life

, because it's just stupid. It's

unprofitable. The label "single-parent woman," a

playmate with a child, is lurking nearby. This is what people in the comments

call any woman with a child from a previous relationship. The logic behind the label is simple. She has a history, which means she's already dangerous. She's a family bankrupt, a defective wife. A single-parent woman is a risk. She's already been through a divorce, already destroyed one family. She deprived her children of their biological father.

And there are millions of videos like this now. This is the

mainstream male agenda. The focus

shifts from what I'm willing to

bring to the relationship to what I'm

willing to tolerate and what risks I'm

taking. The man is defensive.

Intimacy is out of the question here

. Men live with feelings. If you

enter into a marriage, they'll most likely

try to use you. Therefore, it's

safer to keep your distance.

Psychologists who work with men

after divorces often have patients who come to them with the

same phrases. One man

described it this way: "A married man is an

employee who works seven days a week." Always on

duty, always gets a

reprimand at the slightest thing. When you hear this from friends on

podcasts, in comments, in any

conversation about women, you don't become a

cynic, you just start entering

relationships as if they were minefields. Or

don't go in at all. If you look at

the scale, this is no longer a position of individuals.

According to a survey by the sociological group

Rusaneld, 34% of Russians who are already in

a relationship do not plan to

get married at all. They are fine as is. Every

third person lives with a partner and sees no

point in formalizing anything. At the same time, the

share of civil unions is growing. The number of couples

who do not formalize their relationship, according to a series of

data, is approximately four times greater

than at the beginning of the tenth decade. People do not

refuse to live together. They

refuse the papers because they don’t

understand why, for what purpose, they would risk their

status and property. Against this backdrop, it's

easy to think that this whole

marriage thing is something new. It's like before,

men got married peacefully, their wives baked

pies and waited for them to come home from work. And in the movies

they only showed happy couples accompanied by

Muslim Magamaev's song. But if you

rewind a little, it turns out

that we were plagued by marriage both 30 and 50 years

ago. The tools were just different.

Take the Soviet film "The Diamond

Arm". The wife watches her husband like a cop watches a

suspect, and he tries his best

to get away for at least a couple of

hours. Afonya? As soon as the hero

thinks about marriage, it is

clear to the viewer. That's it, the man is finished.

And I need to make you crazy to get married.

Marry. And for

what purpose? So that they would kick me out of the house too.

Then television took over. KVN has

been running on the same joke for 20 years.

The husband wants to go fishing, but the wife won't let him.

The audience is laughing. Comedy Club is constantly building a

whole new direction. In the scenes, the wife waits

with a rolling pin. The husband got caught with his mistress, the

husband got caught with men, the husband just

got caught. Residents have dozens of such miniatures

, and all based on the same idea. A

married man is by default driven and

guilty. Ural dumplings are a separate story

. There, the family is often

shown, so if you look closely, these are

literally scenes of domestic violence with

laughter behind the scenes. The wife screams, throws things, and

might even hit you in the forehead. The man endures. Children

watch and remember that this is probably how it

should be. This is prime time family humor

. And in 2024 and

25, series with the

straightforward, self-explanatory title Honest

Divorce appeared on streaming services. Second marriage. Until marriage do

us part. The word divorce is right there in

the title. You haven't turned on anything yet, and

you've already been told everything about this marriage. And

the point here is not that someone somewhere

got together and decided to oppress the institution of marriage. It's

just that a scandal on camera sells, but a

peaceful dinner doesn't. That's why

we've been shown the same movie about

family for 30 years in a row. Shouts, complaints. The mother-in-law nags, the

wife nags, the children bring problems. You

watch this at 6, at 12, at 20 years old. And

when it comes time for you to make a

decision about marriage, you don’t decide from scratch,

you decide with this picture already in your

head. Now take television out of the equation

altogether. There is still one more

thing that works against the family. And

it works stronger than any comedy,

your everyday life itself and what’s in your

head. Because living alone

has become simply convenient these days. More convenient than ever

before.

In 26, living alone is not

just normal, but very, very

comfortable. This is a qualitatively new situation

compared to how our

parents lived. Older people didn't have much of a choice

. If you want warmth, if you want

someone to hug you or at least listen to you,

get up and go to people, to friends, to

girls, to your parents in the kitchen, to the

boys in the yard, to a club, on a hike.

The TV with four channels

added something, but it couldn’t talk to you

. We have a full range of painkillers in our pockets:

YouTube, RILs,

Telegram, games, bets, porn, Only Fun,

streams, delivery. Each app

quickly gives you something nice and

asks for nothing in return except money. Yes, and even then,

sometimes. There is no need to listen, or

adapt, or remember how

someone else’s day went. Opened it, got my

dose, closed it. And against this background, a living

person with whom you need to talk,

negotiate, and sometimes even tolerate

seems like an expensive and difficult method.

get the same thing. An endless

stream of entertainment does not

make people happy at all. On the contrary, the

more likes, videos, games, and all the

other goodies you have on your phone, the worse

ordinary, simple joys work later.

Sitting with friends, going on

a date, or just starting a book, the brain has already

become accustomed to quick injections, and everything

done slowly seems bland. And a

person does not deliberately refuse intimacy

. He's just getting out of the habit of it.

how one gets out of the habit of long conversations, of

letters, of missing someone for

more than two days. A separate story is the

dating app. Let me tell you right away,

they really work. You really

can meet a person there whom you

would never cross paths with in ordinary life.

But there is a side effect. You find yourself in an

endless feed of profiles, where everything is

arranged the same way. Swipe, write,

disappear. You can correspond with

four different people for months and

never meet any of them. And at the same time feel like

you actually have a personal life

. Nothing happened, no one

got closer, but you seem to be in the

process, and this is very convenient, because it’s

not scary. A live meeting is always a

risk. What if they don't like you? How will

your self-esteem survive this? And the chat doesn't

require anything? There is absolutely no

risk. And here we come to the

main thing, because everything I said

before, statistics, TV series, TikToks,

dating apps, porn - these are external

circumstances. They really exist, they

really put pressure. But different men, given the same

circumstances, end up with

different lives. Some get lost in all this,

others somehow manage to build

relationships, families, and have normal

children. And the difference between these two

types is not in the circumstances, it is in

where a person sees the reason for what is

happening to him. This is called locus of

control. The external locus of control

says: "Well, what do you want? This is the world,

this is the era, it's not about me."

The internal one asks: “What am I

doing in this? Am I choosing or am I carried from

video to video, from swipe to swipe.

When you have an external locus, the first

thing you do is look around. Women are

not the same now, times are not the same,

the economy is crushing, the generation is spoiled. There are

no normal people in my circle. And all

this sounds reasonable, because each

point has its own truth.

The economy is really crushing, toxic people

really exist, the era is really strange. All

this really exists, but with an external locus

you start with this. And that’s where you

end. You don’t ask yourself:

“What have I done myself in the last month

to have a loved one in my life

?” Absolutely nothing. Not a single

attempt. The second thing that an

external locus gives is a pleasant feeling

that you understand everything. You have figured out

the system. You have figured out the feminine essence, the

red flags, the male and female

roles. You can explain in absolutely any

company why Today's

youth don't get married. But for some

reason, there are no changes in your own life,

either for the better or for the

worse. You know that the

marriage market is skewed, that eight out of ten

marriages end in divorce. And you use this knowledge

to avoid trying anything.

Because why bother, if everything is already clear?

Inner locus isn't about whether

everything is working out for you now. It's simply

about a different perspective. You stop

asking why the world is structured this way and

start asking what in this

world depends on me personally. For example, I

only recently learned to ask myself

the right questions about relationships. I can't

find a normal woman anywhere, and why do I even

need a loved one? I can't get into

trouble, and can I talk

about money directly? I can't avoid

conflict. And what do I do when I'm

hurt? Do I yell? Do I leave in silence

for a week? Not how to love forever, but will

I have the strength to stay

when the infatuation has passed? This

last question, will it get to me, it

very quickly ceases It should be about feelings,

because living together

quickly turns into a very mundane

story. Who pays the rent, whose

parents help and whose don't, what to

do if one earns three

times more than the other. It's

generally uncommon to talk about money in relationships,

but it's precisely because of it that everything often

breaks down. Let's talk about this further

.

First, I'll get on my feet, and then

I'll think about family. It sounds familiar,

actually, to me. Yes. Both

guys and girls say that. But at the same time, men

are traditionally expected to contribute more materially

to the family, but they're somehow in no

hurry, they don't want to. You know how girls react

. Men aren't like that, they're childish, they don't

want responsibility, so they

hide behind money. But if you look

beyond this framework and look at the real

numbers, it becomes clear that men aren't just

making excuses. In the summer of

25, the All-Russian Center for Social Affairs directly asked people

why young people are in no hurry to get married, and

71% of thirty-year-olds,

that is, those for whom this issue is closer In

total, 87% have already voted. Housing

was named as a separate issue by one

in four. Conversations about an

infantile generation that doesn't want

responsibility also surfaced in the survey

, but mostly from

older people themselves about the young. And the young people responded

completely differently: "We don't have an apartment or

money." So, in practice,

to get married, it seems you

first need to buy an apartment, get on your feet,

and agree on plans for decades to

come. But at the same time, these things are usually

built by a family once they're married. They

take out a mortgage on a shared home with the couple. They have children

with one person. The 10-

year plan is what the husband

and wife agree on. And so it turns out that people are being asked

to bring into marriage exactly what usually

only emerges within the marriage. That's the

paradox. It's like telling

someone, "Learn to swim, and then

get into the water." If you translate this into

numbers, it becomes clearer where

the feeling of impasse comes from. Let's take An

example analyzed by Forbes. In

2025. Buying a

one-bedroom apartment worth 15

million rubles with a market mortgage and a

down payment of 3 million costs

the borrower approximately 280,000 rubles in

monthly payments over 30 years.

For most young couples, the question isn't whether they're

ready for adulthood, but

simply that their salaries won't be enough,

and the dialogue with the bank ends before any

serious conversations about family begin. And

no, this absolutely doesn't mean people

have fallen out of love with family. It's one of the most

persistent desires. According to surveys, 84%

consistently cite family as an important

value. And this figure doesn't change from year to year

. What changes is something else.

The understanding of how much it now costs to have one's own

place, a normal standard of living, children,

school, clubs, tutors changes. People look

at this estimate, multiply it by 20 years in their heads,

and decide it's better to wait. Not

because they don't want to, but because they don't

see how to afford it. It can go on forever.

Telling yourself, "Now's not the time, I need

to wait until it gets easier." As

if there will come a time when mortgages

will drop sharply, crises will end, and the ruble

will stabilize forever. I'll tell you something about

my personal life. In

1922, I bought myself an

apartment. I was 22 years old. I

was in a relationship. By all external factors

and standards, it seemed like I was definitely

ready for a family. I had a roof over my head,

I had an income, I had a relationship. If

you were looking only at money, you could

confidently go to the Zaks. But the truth is,

I was completely unprepared for marriage, emotionally and psychologically.

I had no idea how I

reacted to a long-term conflict, how I led my

partner, when I needed to

make important decisions in my life.

How do I behave when my partner makes

decisions I don't agree with? Or

when they don't agree with my decisions? Back

then, I understood absolutely nothing about myself

, not even the most basic, simple

things. For example, where are my personal boundaries?

Simply put, I didn't know at what point

I should say: "Stop, this isn't mine anymore,

and I don't like it, and I don't want this

in my life." I had absolutely no

idea that I could be living by someone else's expectations—my

partner, my parents, my friends, my colleagues,

some ideal version of myself that I had to

somehow live up to. I didn't

understand that so much of what I was

imagining wasn't my own

conscious choice, but a repetition of the

scenario my parents lived by.

But I had a clear feeling: "Well,

I have my own apartment, so I

shouldn't have any more questions about my family."

But in reality, to be honest, I was

simply hiding behind my apartment. I

had a beautiful external argument. I

had provided a foundation, and behind it, it was conveniently

hidden that inside I was unprepared for anything.

But such a structure sooner or later

begins to crumble. And I was shaken, and everything

fell apart. And the first thing my brain

suggested, as I sat in the rubble,

was exactly what they write in

the comments under any

relationship video. This is the time, this is the girls, this is the

country, there's a crisis, instability, and

other such nonsense. From the comments under the reels. So,

again, the external locus of control. I

knew how to make money, but I didn't know how to experience

intimacy, I didn't know how to talk, I didn't know how to

be alone for long in a project called

"We." It's unpleasant to admit. It's much more

pleasant to say that getting married now is

unprofitable; women have become different. At

some point, I had to ask myself an

uncomfortable question. If you take away economics,

politics, and horror stories about divorce, what

remains? What remains is fear. Fear of

rejection, fear of failure, fear of

not being the ideal adult

man I imagined for myself.

With an internal locus, the conversation sounds

different. It's not the world that's preventing me from building a

family, but I don't yet know how to build a family in a

way that contains my own and others'

weaknesses. It's painful, but there's strength in it

, because something can now be

done about it. You can honestly admit: "Yes, I'm

afraid of responsibility." And instead of

escaping into another TV series,

another reel, or going to Dota,

go to a therapist, to a group, to a

men's group. A community that discusses exactly

these kinds of situations allows you to look at your

relationship with your parents and understand what

scenarios you're dragging your partner through. You can

study what healthy

boundaries look like and how people work through conflicts

without humiliating themselves in front of each

other. It's not as dramatic as a

video where someone screams that marriage is

slavery. But this is where being an

adult begins. It's not about

denying objective difficulties—well, there

really are a lot of them these days, to be sure—but about

not giving them all the control.

Now let's talk about something pleasant.

Why do we need marriage at all, and what

advantages does it actually have for us

men? While we've been discussing what

can go wrong in marriage, another question remains behind the scenes

: what happens to a

person whose marriage is going

well? It's not such a dramatic story

because normality isn't scary.

However, if you look at specific

data, something interesting emerges. Married

men are less likely to experience chronic

illnesses and, on average, live longer

than their Single colleagues. And yet, we

still die earlier than women. Apparently,

our fate is so sad. A

classic American study

of 67,000 people showed a simple thing:

never-married men aged

19 to 44 die approximately twice as

often as married men. I emphasize, we are not talking

about some percentages, we are talking about

whole times. Of course, this requires

normal, caring relationships. There is

another interesting study.

Americans studied 127,000 adults and

found that married men smoke less, drink

less, are less likely to lead a sedentary lifestyle, and are

less likely to complain of poor health.

True, married men are more often than

others to be overweight, but this is

understandable. But if we take dangerous

behavior, that is, what really

kills prematurely, single and

divorced people are noticeably

heavier. But here, too, everything is clear

why. In my opinion, I think the point is

that a married man simply

develops long-term plans for how

he should live and be as

healthy as possible. He needs to raise his

children, make sure they go to school, and have time to

play with his grandchildren. And when you don't have

such milestones on the horizon, the motivation to

take care of yourself is much less. But it's important to

make one caveat here. An analysis of over 120

studies has shown that improved health is

associated not with the mere fact of getting a stamp in your

passport, but with quality relationships.

High marital satisfaction

directly correlates with better

blood pressure and

inflammation markers. Conflict-ridden,

toxic relationships have the opposite

effect: high blood pressure, chronic

stress, and worsening physical

health. Yes, of course, it's

technically comfortable to be alone these days. You can

live for decades, with gadgets,

services, and casual relationships, and not

make any commitments. But in

the long run, it's a stable

partnership that gives a man what no amount of

money can buy: meaning,

support, and love. Well, we've finally

gotten there. Love is

truly the most important thing. Without much

In my personal opinion, there's

absolutely no point in getting married when it comes to love. We're

used to considering only one side:

what I'll lose in marriage. But there's another

side, one that's rarely talked about: what I'll

gain in marriage. And most importantly, what I'll never

get without it. If

you consider both sides, the conversation about

disadvantages sounds different.

Ultimately, the choice is yours. We'll talk about this

choice last. People

are saying diametrically opposed things about marriage online these days

. On the

one hand, it's a trap where a man will be

hyped up and abandoned. On the other hand, it's

quieter because these are completely

unpopular thoughts. Marriage is one of

the few pillars that keeps a person

afloat over the long haul. Not every

marriage, not in any form, not with everyone, but

on average, being

with someone close usually takes you further

than being alone. I'm not telling you to get married

quickly before your life is over. I have no

right to say that. I'm not

married myself. Yes, I had a serious relationship, yes, there

was a proposal, everything fell apart, I was unraveled

, I crawled out of there through

depression, antidepressants, work with

a psychologist, dopamine pits, and a beautiful

explanation of why everyone around me is to blame

except me. I can't guarantee that

your marriage will be happy and that you'll

never get divorced, but I definitely see a

difference between the "the world is to blame" position and the

"I'm learning to build" position. In the first

case, you'll spend the rest of your 40s or 50s

finding more and more arguments

why now is not the time. In the second

case, you'll start working on yourself with simple steps

, removing people differently,

talking about money and boundaries differently, and not

running away at the first sign of trouble. I honestly

don't know when you'll get married. Maybe in a

year, maybe in 10, maybe absolutely

never. It's entirely up to you

. I don't care at all what you

ultimately choose. I care how you

come to this choice. Because in the meantime, I've

thought everything through and decided that family - It's not

for me, and I never

tried it because everyone wrote that it was a

trap. The difference is absolutely huge.

In the first case, it's your life. In

the second, it's someone else's, and you're just

repeating lines. Now a question for

you. In what moments of this video did you

recognize yourself? What thoughts about family

pop up in your head most often? And where do they

come from? And most importantly, what's your

locus of control? Do you tend to think more about

circumstances or about things that depend

on you personally? Write about it in

the comments. Perhaps it turns out that

you and I have much more in common

than it seems at first glance.