Disclaimer: I am in fact a single, straight, educated black man who has JUST within the last few years matured enough to seriously consider marriage. Now for me its about timing and the right woman. 

There is an epidemic in The United States.  A country wide problem that threatens to destroy the very fabric of our union if we don’t get it figured out.  The problem is this; people are not getting married as often as they have in the past.  In fact, many of the people who do get married don’t stay married. The numbers say close to fifty percent of marriages end in divorce.  Selah.

My question is why? Intuitively we know marriage is a good thing.  Couples that marry have children and create families, which make strong communities, cities, states and ultimately a strong vibrant country.  Statistically speaking married people live longer, healthier, happier and wealthier lives.  Marriage is surprisingly beneficial for men.  Married men have sex more often and make up to 40% more than their single peers. Yet our generation seems to be waiting longer to get married and in many cases not at all.

The situation is substantially worse in the black community; black women are two times less likely to marry than any other ethnic group of women.  The numbers for black men are down right scary, almost twenty five percent of us will end up spending time in a jail cell. In all honesty when you look at the statistics, many of the problems within the black community can be traced to the lack of couples that marry and stay together.  But again the real issue is why.  Based on my observation and the input of friends here are six reasons.

Finances: Getting married is expensive.  In fact dating is expensive, particularly if you are a man.  The average couple spends over 26k on their wedding and that cost doesn’t include an engagement ring or honeymoon. The average cost of dinner and a movie is north of 145 dollars when you include hair cut, dinner, tip, drinks, movie tickets and popcorn…and I didn’t include taxi(for us Chicagoans and New Yorkers) or gas.  It takes cold hard cash to date and get married.  And if you look at the fact that less than 20 percent of black men advance to college and only a third of those graduate you start to see how this plays out.  The average salary for a black man with no college degree is $18,396 a year.  Its hard to pay 145 dollars for a date on that salary let alone pay 1.5 times it for a wedding.  As a side note: Ladies, men are usually happiest when we are satisfied with our career direction and financial state…dating a man with issues in those areas is usually problematic.

Too Many Choices: For the fellas that are in a practical position to date and marry choosing who to date can be tough.  There are many choices and it can be hard to figure out who is for you.  I call it the “candy store effect”. Even the most God fearing and well intentioned man can find himself entertaining too many “friends” if he isn’t careful.  This causes a completely different set of problems. 1) Men don’t really pursue women like they should…because somewhere some woman is pursuing them. 2) Men can become selfish, seeing women they date as a commodity that can be replaced when the situation requires. 3) Women become objects and trophies to be collected. The only cure for this is maturity, Jesus and a renewed mind towards relationships.  The unfortunate thing is that it takes time for that to happen. Many black men aren’t ready for marriage until there late 20’s and most in there 30’s. 

Lack of Maturity: It’s a sad fact but most black boys grow up without a father in the home.  According to the US census, 75 percent of black children will spend some portion of their childhood without a father in the house.  It’s hard to mature into something you’ve never seen.  Additionally the media (music, videos, radio) in our community define a man as a testosterone driven, misogynist who’s main goal in life is the pursuit of pleasure the consumption of more alcohol, more toys and more women. Look at the most popular rappers and athletes to see my point. Many boys grow up trying to emulate that type of man; the rappers they see on television without even knowing it.  The sad part is they are often successful in doing it.  It’s just too bad that type of a man doesn’t value marriage.

Too Much Baggage: The lack of a healthy marriage in the home doesn’t just affect young men.  In fact, it may be difficult for women to identify the traits of a good future father and husband as a result.  This means that many women make poor choices in who they date and are hurt because of the experience.  Often times the damage is carried into the next relationship with similar consequences.  Unfortunately many of these women never understand that the issue is not that good men aren’t available.  The problem is actually that they don’t have the internal discernment to identify a good future mate.  That kind of intuition can only be passed from father to daughter.  Many times they prefer the immature man without even knowing it…passing over many “good” men in the process. 

Fear: Personally I define fear as faith based on bad experiences or information.  Unfortunately because so many of our families had bad experiences with relationships and marriage we fear it.  We internalize the pain and frustration we saw so many loved ones go through and shy away from marriage as a result.  For men oftentimes we see it as restriction and loss of freedom.  Many women see it as pain; submitting to a man who ultimately may hurt them emotionally.  It’s a tragedy in the classic sense when you think about it.

Dating Poorly: My pastor used to tell us that dating was to collect data on a future mate.  He also would say if you weren’t ready to be married, then why date? In today’s day and age, dating is less about finding a life long mate and more about selfish pursuits in the now.  Let me explain.  Some women are going out to dinner because they are bored, hungry or just want to get out the house.  They aren’t looking to focus their attention on learning about the guy.  As a consequence they aren’t asking the right questions to identify traits of a good husband and father.  We already know what most men want and even if it isn’t sex, they want the attention from the woman and could care less about her being a good wife or mother.

Conclusion: What if we decided to change? What if we changed our focus? What if we made it popular to be married? Making it a point that Sean Carter and Beyonce aren’t just “together” but they are married and then had a child.  What if we saw Barack and Michelle as more than just the first couple, but as blue prints to design our life after? What if women were open and decided that they would learn how to identify a good man instead of screaming that they don’t exist.  What if we did a better job educating our young men instead of labeling so many “emotionally disabled” at a young age? Then they would have a fighting chance in life and be able to afford marriage.  Fellas what if we decided that central to manhood was the ability to love and cherish one woman…as a wife? What if we stopped honoring the rappers and singers who blatantly objectify women?  If we did this, things would change.  We would see marriage levels rebound within our community and our social ills decline.   The United States itself would be strengthened if we got married more often. 

What do you think?

By: @waltward3

Walter Ward III is a Jesus loving, sneaker collecting international finance guy mashed together with an eclectic philanthropist who loves 2 write & talk about world affairs, hip hop, relationships & business… Oh, And he likes to see you be your best too.

The fantasy of marriage looks a lot different from reality. Here’s a wake-up call.

Marriage is like a tube of toothpaste: You get the best results when you start squeezing at the bottom. (Insert your own marital hanky-panky joke here.) The most successful marriages start with a solid foundation. That foundation is built on many things—mutual interests, shared beliefs, selflessness, and, of course, love—but the biggest problem going into many marriages is that those basics are often held back by unrealistic expectations.

All of us know someone for whom marriage didn’t work out. We’ve all heard the statistics. First marriages have a failure rate of more than 40 percent. Second marriages end in divorce 60 percent of the time. This is particularly true of the generation whose parents married (and subsequently divorced) in the 1970s.

We think we know what marriage is because we’ve seen it on TV. It’s Monica and Chandler, all candles and sex and witty banter. It’s the end-of-the-day slow dancing of Cliff and Claire Huxtable. It’s the tuxedos and pigtailed flower girls and white chiffon spectacle of The Bachelorette on ABC. Then, when everything doesn’t turn out exactly as we dreamed, we look for an out, blame it on irreconcilable differences, and scrap the covenant.

The differences aren’t the problem, though; our irreconcilable expectations are. Let’s look, then, at some of those predetermined ideas and dump marriage out of its box. Here’s something you should know before you say “I Do”: not what marriage is, but five things it isn’t.

A cure for loneliness

In a society where we’re plugged in twenty-four hours a day, where “community” is more often used to describe your Facebook friends than an actual neighborhood, people long to connect intimately with someone.  
We see couples everywhere—in restaurants, on TV, on the bus or train or sidewalks on the way to work—and feel like something is missing in our lives if we’re alone. As humans, we have an innate need to belong, and we expect a spouse to provide that sense of acceptance and intimacy and comfort. We’re Jerry Maguire looking for a soul mate, someone to whom we can say, “You complete me.”

Best case scenario, that’s what a good marriage will provide. But I know couples in loving relationships who remain lonely. Why? After all, they’ve found a perfect mate who has taken great strides toward fulfilling their need for intimacy. But that’s a heavy load for one person to bear, despite the stories Cameron Crowe tells. Lonely single people become lonely married people. If your goal in marriage is to satisfy your need to belong, your next stop may be heartbreak.

An escape from boredom

In 1991, U.S. News and World Report reported that half of U.S. workers said the reason they have a job—aside from needing to earn a living—was to keep from being bored. What does this have to do with marriage? Plenty. Some couples get married to shake off boredom. Life becomes dull, and it’s easy to convince yourself that a serious relationship will make the day more bearable. It’s something else to do, the next step after graduating college and getting a job and exploring the dating scene. When you get married, you expect built-in happiness. Automatic entertainment. Regular conversation. At least you’ll have someone to watch TV with.

Unfortunately, this fails to account for the true cause of boredom, which isn’t necessarily an external lack of stimulus, but rather an internal one. You’re not bored because you’ve seen every episode of The Real World: New Orleans thirty times. You’re bored because you can’t come up with something better to do after watching it the first time. It’s not my fault you’re bored, nor is it MTV’s fault. It’s yours. 
Getting married in order to generate a little excitement in your life is a terrible motivation. Why? Because once the merry-go-round stops—once the novelty wears out—you’ll immediately start looking for the next ride.

A rowdy sex romp

As the old experiment goes, put a penny in a jar for every time you have sex during the first year of marriage. Then, beginning at the start of your second year, take a penny out every time you do the horizontal two-step. Chances are, a couple of years later, you’ll still be pulling pennies.

Does the sex stop after twelve months of good lovin’? No. Not by any means. But is every night a page out of the Karma Sutra? Nope. Despite what guys think, your wife won’t always want to wear that see-through teddy. Elastic and lace just aren’t that comfortable in some places. And ladies? Keeping the romance alive is hard work for us guys. Sometimes we just want to watch SportsCenter.

Still, with communication and sensitivity, sex can (and should) remain a vital part of marriage. It’s the ultimate bonding activity for a couple to share. But remember it’s not the only activity. Don’t expect marriage to be a fifty-year honeymoon of libido and lipstick.

A means to a makeover

How many times have you heard this? “He’s not really interested in the stuff I like to do, but that’ll change once we get married.” Very few marriages that launch from that pad end up happily ever after.

If there’s anything you should know about marriage, it’s this: saying “I do” may change your legal relationship, but it doesn’t change your character. Don’t enter a marriage expecting to remake your husband or wife into someone else. You can’t. People have baggage, stuff they’ve wheeled around behind them since childhood. It’s been with us so long, very few have the willpower to drop it before entering the wedding chapel. The flaws go with you.

Don’t marry someone for who they might become. Marry them for who they are right now.

An easy transition

There’s a reason romantic movies end, rather than begin, with a wedding. It’s because that’s when the hard stuff starts. For anyone who’s lived on their own for any length of time, the space between singleness and marriage is a wide one. It’s a difficult transition for many.

“I wasn’t ready for all the changes,” a friend of mine once told me about his first few months of marriage. “I could deal with moving into her place and giving up my furniture—it was pretty much crap anyway. But what surprised me was having to deal with her emotions. When you’re dating, you always see her best face. Once you get married, you see everything.”

Women don’t have it any easier. Many secretly wince at the notion of placing their fate alongside that of another, worrying that the role of wife might eat into their sense of individuality. There’s no way around making these adjustments. In order for the marriage to last more than a week or two, you’ll have to find a way to cope. Don’t be taken by surprise; expect a few hiccups going in.

Let me get a head start by ending with this disclaimer. We’ve been discussing what marriage is not, but here’s what marriage is: Marriage is wonderful. There is no better way to make it through life than with a partner who loves you despite your morning breath, despite your stinky Converse All-Stars, and despite your failure to clean coffee stains. Marriage is deeply satisfying, incredibly fulfilling, and loads of fun. It makes the harsh edges of life a little softer. It brings joy and hope and laughter. But it’s not easy, and it’s not something to rush into without thinking.

So: Know the benefits. Know the challenges. Know your potential mate. Get your expectations right. Then, jump in with both feet. You’re gonna like it.

Jason Boyett is a blogger and author, most recently of O Me of Little Faith (Zondervan). This article was adapted from The Pocket Guide to Adulthood (Relevant Books).