Some years ago Dalrock produced a hypothesis. That western women want to have it all, and on their terms. This includes having a great career, wonderful children, and a narrative that has moved beyond merely landing a husband and being married to him while producing two point five children, remaining beautiful and having a career — modeled in Tom Clancy’s books by Cathy Ryan, who begins as a neurosurgeon and ends up as the first lady — has broken.

Instead the narrative is driven by Eat, Pray, Love. That the first husband will not meet all your needs, and you will grow out of him and go on a spiritual journey that will end up with you falling in love again. It’s useful to look at the videos: the hero has changed from a man with a gun to a man who can cook.

To quote the source.

For those having trouble keeping track of all of this, having it all means:

1. Getting her feminist merit badge while having sex with the most attractive men who are willing to have sex with her. After a decade or so of this, she:
2. Marries a nice reliable man who provides the financial support and social status of wife and perhaps mother. Once she has gotten out of this what she wants, she:
3. Discovers that she is unhaaapy, and was somehow “trapped in marriage!” Many women prefer to savor this step for some period of time, perhaps even for many years. There is power and drama here and the next step contains risk.
4. Is forced to divorce the bad man who made her unhaaapy by doing everything she demanded he do.
5. Basks in the drama of a newly divorced woman, wronged by her ex husband and the society which forced her to marry the wrong man.
6. Has sex with the most attractive men who are (still) willing to have sex with her. Since this misguided attempt at reliving the glory of her twenties is generally an immense disappointment, she then wants to quickly move on to:
7. Finds her secret multimillionaire hunky handyman who insists that she marry him, thus returning her to the higher social status of wife.

Believe it or not, the having it all list ends here. A woman divorcing once and then marrying up says drama, rebirth, and empowerment. A woman divorcing twice says loser who couldn’t keep a man. Divorcing without remarrying says post marital spinster, also known as crazy cat lady her still married friends, colleagues, and relatives make fun of. Key to this process is to stick the landing so she winds up in the group making fun of the crazy cat ladies instead of becoming one of them.

Now, part of this is that if you, as a guy, provide too much and do not lead but instead do whatever she wants, like a doormat, the chance is that most heterosexual women will no longer find you attractive. The mechanisms of attraction are based, like it or not, on masculinity and feminity, and are visceral.

It wasn’t the corny jokes in the song. It wasn’t the dressing up as a boy band. It wasn’t even the total irreverence for being in the Lord’s house. Rather, it was the pedestalizing supplication. No woman could watch her man act like this without her libido immediately packing its suitcase, exiting the building, and entering the witness protection relocation program, never to be seen or heard from again. Any unmarried woman watching this will continue to say she’s hoping to find a good Christian man like one of these to marry; she’ll complain about the Viking Barbarians and make a show of locking her front door against them, but in moments of temptation and weakness she’ll find herself daydreaming about leaving the backdoor unlocked just in case…

The good news, Ladies, is that if you are honest and tell your man that you don’t want to be on a pedestal… bluntly, most men will get it. Particularly if you explain the consequences as graphically as SSM did. Now, Tori gives the narrative so well in this song: she remains true to the narrative even though (particularly in some live versions) you can hear the sadness in her voice. She lost her man, and she grieves.

The trouble is that your heart will break as you do this, and you will not be able to handle it for a while. Most of us are not Julia Roberts, and Julia Roberts was acting. Dalrock has a good post on what happened to the author of EPL and whom she ended up with. I’m sure he’s a lovely man, but he’s not a movie star, and neither is she. Now, of course, there are plenty of songs which are sold as empowering on this, but even then there is a broken heart. Even in the young. Our faith in others scars up so easily.

Now, the problem with this narrative goes back to point one. Get your feminist merit badge. That used to be a four-year degree: if you were not a college graduate you are a loser — which, assuming you graduate high school at 17, takes you to 21. But then it became graduate school. Try 23; 27 if you need a PhD, MD, or JD. Then it became getting a job and being established. Getting partnerships. Which takes a decade of eighty hour weeks. From around age 21 to 31 if you’re lucky: more often from around 25 to 35.

Now, that cuts into the time you have to actually find a husband. Or to romance. Anyone. Besides, the script is now known, and most men don’t want to play it. So the field is changing.

Brother Dalrock with the consequences.

Women wanting to have it all have a delicate balancing act to perform, and this gets more difficult every year. Much of this comes from the ever increasing age of first marriage combined with the realities of fertility and the wall. A woman who marries in her late twenties or early thirties doesn’t have time on her side if she hopes to divorce and remarry. If she divorces without having children it isn’t a given that she will be able to remarry in time to have children with partner-for-life number two. Also, she may feel that it is classier to have at least two of her children by the same baby daddy, so this would mean remaining married to her starter husband long enough to have two children.

But it isn’t just having children that the woman attempting to have it all needs to consider when deciding how long to stay married to her starter husband. She also wants to maximize the cash and prizes she receives in the process. Having a child, or better yet two is extremely helpful here, but if she wants alimony depending on the state she may have to wait ten years to discover that she is unhappy. If she wants to be eligible for Social Security benefits based on her first husband’s income (should she not be able to remarry) ten years is the cutoff for that as well.

Waiting ten years to divorce her starter husband doesn’t give today’s have-it-aller much time to enjoy her divorce empowerment and then remarry. If she marries in her late twenties and waits ten years to divorce she will be in her late thirties before she can start sampling penises again. By then her chances to remarry have dropped dramatically, and they will continue to drop each year she fails to remarry*. The problem is worse than the remarriage stats would suggest though, because they don’t take into account the quality of her prospects for remarriage. She found her first husband when she was younger and didn’t have the baggage of another man’s children and a history of not keeping her sacred promise. She now has to sell an older baggage laden version of herself to a smaller pool of eligible men. Not only are single men her own age sought after by the newest crop of marriage delayers, but a large percentage of them earn nothing or next to nothing.

Even if a woman marries and divorces by her early twenties, remarriage will be far more difficult today than it would have been in the past. Remarriage rates for women 20-25 today are half of what they were twenty years ago*.

Right, so what to do?

Break the narrative. You cannot have it all. The narrative is a lie. But, over time, you can grow into great adventures. You can raise kids, you will develop a strength and deep sense of your place by the relationship network that you make.

This is what you want to be able to say.

I bought an actual wedding dress off the rack at a bridal boutique the morning of my wedding. It was $200. The most expensive item of clothing I have ever purchased. I wear it every year on my anniversary. After 14 years and three children it still fits perfectly.