Hedo did it last week.

Some sort of internet flu must be going around..

i don’t. in fact, i assiduously try to avoid it by selecting girls who are not hot for husband. as i’ve mentioned before, marriage is inherently a raw deal for men, especially men with options, both in the legal sense and the pleasure principle sense.
but this doesn’t alter the fact that, on average, women are more interested in marriage and kids than are men.
where women are content cooing and ahhing over baby pictures and poring through bridal magazines, men are planning their next great tactical move in the neverending status wars over access to prime pussy.
anhedonistic may be the exception to the rule but her relationship history suggests just the opposite — that she has, indeed, like most women, held the concept of marital life in high regard as evidenced by the fact that she did get married and stayed married for years, even bearing a child with the guy. it follows she does not now value marriage because she was either emotionally disillusioned by the behavior of her now ex-husband (hence, my leetle probing questions she continually evades) or has tried and failed to land a quality second husband owing to her steadily degenerating sexual and feminine appeal; such failure, it should be noted, which goes a long way toward explaining the sour grapes she squeezes out to assuage her haughty but brittle ego.
the only other explanation is one that is not very flattering to her — she was simply too dumb to comprehend the implications of married life to mr. big and the underlying landscape of male desire. the funny thing is that this is a special kind of willful stupidity usually practiced by people smart enough to concoct exquisite rationalizations of equalist drivel to deny the immutable fact of male-female differences.
and even to get a degree in it.
heh heh heh.

“as I’m an exceedingly loyal lover ”

while some rare women may look askance at marriage they won’t be happy to settle for a life without love. and as women are more commitment-oriented than men that love often comes with strings attached.
no one, not even anhedonic, can live without love. at least they can’t live in any capacity that we could fairly call the good life. if she wants to experience the love of a man who will stick around for longer than a few pokes in her wizard sleeve vagin she had better wise up fast to the encroaching reality all around her.

“It’s not only self-evidently false”

agreed. my editor was taking a piss break. a more precise wording would have been to replace “observation of reality” with “observation of human nature” but then it wouldn’t have had the same ring.
i exclude the hard sciences and related sciences not far removed from the mathematically latticed core disciplines. the soft sciences still, by and large, adhere to the blank slate theory of human nature in the face of overwhelming genetic evidence to the contrary (not to mention a thousand years of common sense found in the great works of literature and philosophy and in the bars and nightclubs of modern courtship environments). sociology, cultural anthropology, psychology, women’s studies, etc…. all frolic in a land of wishful thinking where pretty lies are preferable to ugly truths.
hedonistic is exhibit A, a card-carrying member of the aging feminist phalanx of reality-deniers and obfuscators.
her study of “human ecology” doesn’t pass the smell test. though if she has parlayed that BS degree into a profitable venture arranging diversity workships for government clients then i salute her resourcefulness in leveraging the prevailing mainstream idiocy into personal wealth.

I’m just curious, Roissy, why you assume everyone wants to be married? I mean, I (for instance) just don’t think I can envision getting into such a relationship, and I don’t think it’s any fear of commitment, as I’m an exceedingly loyal lover (probably because I’m first a friend).

Also, this:
“(the irony is that getting credentialed in the observation of reality is a sure sign of complete reality denial.)”

Yeah, please tell me something I don’t know about the Earth. Go on.

I can’t believe that someone who can string words together as coherently as you would say something like this. It’s not only self-evidently false, it’s abjectly stupid, and you know that. Come on.

ps. don’t assume that I am american.

2. Folks, I know U must resist my alpha-female compulsion to always have the last fucking word on everything. Sorry, it’s my sickness. Tootles!

at what point in the doomed marriage did he begin approximating your income? this is not a dealbreaker in my opinion but it will help clarify if he was sponging off you for many years while getting his career off the ground and if that had contributed to your disillusionment with the marriage.
be that as it may, we have established that income disparity at the time of the divorce was not the lethal poison in the well; so i ask again:
what happened to precipitate the demise of your marriage to mr. big?
a husband who, if your glowing review of his attributes is to be taken at face value, sounds that good on paper would not be a candidate for marital dismissal from a, shall we say, less than feminine wife who also bore his child simply because he wasn’t doing household chores 50% of the time.

“the thought of a woman with a science degree”

non-sequitor.

“(And can I watch?)”

sorry. no old chicks.

“my degree is in human ecology”

AKA soft science marxist equalist drivel.

“the science of humans in interaction with one another”

silly shrew.
you don’t need the clusterfuck of the ivory tower to learn about human social dynamics.
you just need to open your eyes.

(the irony is that getting credentialed in the observation of reality is a sure sign of complete reality denial.)

“when it comes to human relationshps you’re beyond outmatched”

you should ask for a tuition refund.

“So no, really, it all adds up.”

you never did answer my leetle questions.

“complex human beings”

you’re not as complex as you like to think you are.
‘it’s complicated’
-some pained reality-denier

“anti-HPS tirades”

does referring to yourself in the third person give you an innoculating feeling of power in our illuminating exchanges?

“I imagine him whacking off to porn in his mommy’s basement and it sure does make me snicker.”

these scenarios you imagine… do they make the pain go away?

yours in christ,
roissy

Does the thought of a woman with a science degree making (just under) six figures (government work no less), like, make your head want to explode or something? (And can I watch?) Family background notwithstanding (nothing inherited yet, folks still alive) my degree is in human ecology – the science of humans in interaction with one another – so I’m afraid that when it comes to human relationshps you’re beyond outmatched. My ex is also a scientist/engineer traveing around the world back and forth from the Pentagon. So no, really, it all adds up. Just not in your little pea brain.

The blogosphere is a fascinating place where people project their Flatland delusions on living, breathing, complex human beings. I do it myself: Every time Roissy goes of on his anti-HPS tirades I imagine him whacking off to porn in his mommy’s basement and it sure does make me snicker. I wonder if it’s because the internet is a two-dimensional medium . . . I wonder if we just can’t help it. Hm. Let me think about that.

cleo, don’t let her act fool you. she’s an aging schoolmarm coming face to face with her impending sexual expiration who harbors bitter resentment towards men and the younger, fresher women those men love.
HTH.

my position is for me to choose.
i call em as i see em.
c below.

“My 6?5? Ken Doll biathlete with the six-figure income?”

if he was such a catch, why did you leave him? and saying you didn’t want to be “the Wife” is evasive bullshit, considering that you married him in the first place and being the smart woman you claim you are understood the general outlines of what constitutes married life.
so, what was it?
found evidence he was fucking some hot little minx on the road?
his equipment failed when you couldn’t shed the post-pregnancy weight?
he started keeping a mistress when the age on your face began to show?

“so bone up and report back when you’re done”

not once in this link you posted does the author mention in her list of supposed refutations the very strong evidence for a man’s relative lower income contributing to marital instability.
or:
it’s the income disparity, stupid.

“(seriously, he looks like Big on Sex and the City).”

the shrew doth protest too much.

“I’m not jealous of these women in the slightest”

you certainly sound serene.

“my sex life runs circles around his.”

how long do these revolving door men in your life stick around?

“Happy Thanksgiving, all!”

you sound happy.

“sorry, science degree, bzzzt!). ”

something doesn’t add up. above, you mentioned that you make too much money for either of you — so much, in fact, that you did not use the leverage of the law to secure yourself a plump alimony and child support contract from him. a post later you bragged that ex-mr. big makes a six figure income. the reader would be forgiven for assuming that you make *at least* well into the mid-six figures for your storyline to make any sense.
now i know of no science degree that will get you that level of income. the highest paid physicists who flirt with nobel fame get paid around 150-200K, depending on whether they stay in academia or move into private sector research. and as everyone not steeped in equalist ideology knows the highest levels of science and math are DOMINATED by men.
so, you either got your money some other way (inheritance? career change? whoring? previously undisclosed divorce windfall?) or mr. big is really mr. big loser.
or you are lying to everyone about your super-duper high income.
which is it?

“this conversation is on indefinite hiatus”

you know what’s not on hiatus?
father time.
and he’s tapping his watch.

1. You are in no position to project your delusions on my relationship(s).

2. You ask of my ex? My 6′5″ Ken Doll biathlete with the six-figure income? (seriously, he looks like Big on Sex and the City). He’s been in two LTRs since we separated and no, I’m not jealous of these women in the slightest; I’ve met them both. Frankly, my sex life runs circles around his.

3. If you’re going to spout relationship psychobabble yourself, you might as well get it right, so here are the REAL statistics on two-income couples, marriage rates and infidelity, so bone up and report back when you’re done:

http://www.pobronson.com/blog/2006/08/response-to-forbes-dont-marry-career.html

Until then, this conversation is on indefinite hiatus.

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

hed, some comments.

“We’re still friends and (literally) neighbors.”

have you seen him bring home hot women?
if so, does it bother you?

“because the job of Wife”

what job, specifically, do you mean?
in your answer, please do try to keep both feet on the ground and avoid feminist bromides.

“I never asked for a dime of alimony or child support”

i admire your integrity.
seriously.

“Bottom line is I make too much money for either”

ah.
now we are getting somewhere.
you are aware of studies showing that a woman having a high income, especially one having higher income than the men she dates, correlates with lower chances of getting married and higher rates of divorce?
if not, let me introduce you to one of those facts of human nature you seem hellbent on dismissing with a wave of your pop psychology terms of evasion.
unless your ex-husband brought compensating factors to the table, there is a strong likelihood that the income disparity worked to corrode the attraction you once felt for him at the beginning of the relationship when he showed signs of “potential”. having failed to keep up his end of the bargain through either lack of ambition or unfortunate choice of career, you slowly, and quite subconsciously, began to grow cold at the thought of sleeping with him. you were probably not aware of the real reason for the loss of love other than to point your accusing finger at backwards-rationalizing smoke & mirrors like “he doesn’t keep up his end of the housework”.
now perhaps he was less than supportive during your illness, or maybe you suspected him of cheating while he was on the road (a well-known risk of spending many nights in hotel bars away from the family), in which case you could turn to the explanatory convenience of those shortcomings to buttress the emotional walls you were erecting between you and him.

“As for this player/poseur thing ”

women don’t want players.
they want alpha men.
and these are not the same thing.