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Single man asks married men their biggest marriage regret and they don't disappoint

“She’s not complaining. She’s giving you the roadmap on how to treat her.”

Photo credit: Canva

Man asks married men their biggest marriage regret, they deliver

Marriage is a big step in a relationship. It's something that people think about from the time they can grasp the concept of relationships. When you factor that in with the high divorce rate, it makes sense that people want to make sure they're getting it right before they take the leap.

Typically people ask their close inner circle relationship advice. Leaning on people like their parents, siblings or friends who have been married to fill in the gaps of knowledge. But with the world being smaller than ever due to social media, it takes little effort to gather more collective knowledge from thousands of people from your target audience.

Surprisingly, people are pretty forthcoming to strangers on the internet looking for support and help. One man who goes by the name King Boiza decided to ask his internet advisors, "married men what is your greatest regret about marriage? Advise the single boys. It could be about anything." They married men didn't hesitate to answer the call in the most genuinely wholesome way.

Gleaning collective wisdom from those more experienced than you is a common practice, but being able to do it in such a large way is relatively new. Different life experiences lead to different perspectives that can be invaluable to someone still learning.

The advice provided ranged from warnings to what could be seen as universal truths about marriage.

"Your wife becomes the words you speak upon her, I regret not speaking life and good upon her," one man shares.

"In times of trouble, remember...It's not you against her but the both of you, against the problem...," someone writes.

"Listen when she speaks from the heart, once she feels unheard, she will be closed off for a long time if not forever," another advises.

"Not all women age gracefully with all their good looks and physique. Marry her for more reasons beyond her body and beauty. Seek a FOREVER," one commenter says.

Forbes reports that 43% of first marriages end in divorce with the number significantly increasing with each subsequent marriage. Finding out the regrets, struggles and triumphs of other marriages may help others feel more prepared to commit to marriage with a bit of a roadmap laid in front of them.

It's clear from the comments under the post that marriage takes work and while some of the men admittedly misstepped, they seem eager to share with others so they avoid the same mistakes.

"My biggest regret in marriage was to cheat and I'm telling you...my wife was never the same...so my advice is never cheat never ever," one guy confesses.

TikTok · Kingboiza

www.tiktok.com

"We tend to take our spouse for granted once we get married. Continue to invest your time in her. You won't regret it and she'll know that you really see her," one man shares.

But it wasn't only men who dropped by the comment section. Women stopped to share their appreciation for the wisdom being left for all to see.

"After reading this comment section, my faith in the institution of marriage is restored. Relationships are not perfect, but we gotta try with people who want to try," one woman writes.

"I don't know why I'm crying...I guess I never knew men like these existed...Your wives must be blessed," another woman shares.

If you need a dose of healthy masculinity and wholesome advice for lasting partnerships, look no further than that comment section. They're saving some future couple from heartache by simply showing up to answer a stranger's question on the internet.


This article originally appeared on 7.10.24

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Pop Culture

Comedian debunks the popular '50% of marriages end in divorce' myth in viral video

Comedian and writer Alex Falcone explains how this "dumb statistic" is just plain wrong.

@alex_falcone/TikTok

How did we all come to believe this very inaccurate statistic?

We’ve all heard the statistic that “50% of marriages end in divorce” at least once in our adult lives. And considering that many of us probably know a few couples that have gotten divorced (including our own parents) we probably never gave its validity much of a second thought.

But romantics, rejoice! For this cynical statistic is, irrefutably, false. Recently comedian Alex Falcone took to TikTok to debunk this commonly believed myth.

In a now viral video, Falcone begins by saying that “first of all, it’s a dumb thing to measure,” because “until the 1970s, divorce law was very different. So really, it would have been a measurement of what percentage of couples are trapped in bad situations.”

What makes this a “dumb statistic,” Falcone continues, is that it doesn’t consider the duration of any marriage—from “the couple that held hands while the water came in on the Titanic counts exactly the same as someone who got hit by a bus on their honeymoon” to the “overachievers” who are “really good” at getting married and divorced over and over again.

Essentially, “if someone gets divorced five times, they get counted five times,” Falcone says. It’s easy to see how this can set the statistic askew very quickly.

But truly, the biggest Achilles' heel of this truism is that it’s nearly impossible to truly “track every single marriage that's ever happened” to accurately determine how they ended, be it divorce or death…not to mention track the ones that are still going strong.


@alex_falcone Unlearning: No, 50% of marriages don't end in divorce.
♬ original sound - Alex Falcone


Of course, you don’t have to take Falcone’s word for it. Experts have been debunking this myth for years (of course, they haven't done it in nearly as entertaining a way as Falcone). According to the New York Times, the highest the divorce rate has ever been was 41%. Elsewhere there are estimates closer to 23%.

And the United States Census Bureau states that divorce rates have been declining over the past decade. We can thank certain societal shifts for this, like people waiting until later in life to get married, and the rise of long term, non-marital relationships.

In 2021, the rate was just under 7%. Again, no tangible ways of getting an accurate assessment, but certainly nowhere near 50%.

So how did this myth come to be in the first place?

The prevailing theory leads back to post-World War II, when the Baby Boomer generation began marrying and starting families, during which there were projections that divorce rates would eventually get that high. So far, they never have.

Bottom line: statistics aren’t always reliable. This is an especially important thing for couples to remember so as to not invoke some kind of self-fulling prophecy. After all, we are far more well-equipped with knowledge and resources to help strengthen our relationships than ever before. So don’t give up on love just yet!

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Education & Information

A major study claiming men leave their wives when they become ill has been debunked

This is good news.

Photo credit: Canva

Study showing increased divorce when wife is ill is wrong

It was the study that shook views of marriage across the country. Researchers concluded that men simply couldn't handle the "sickness" part of their wedding vows, consistently bowing out of their marriage if their wife became sick. The results of the study were cited everywhere and you can still find them being regurgitated in hot take internet think pieces.

The paper is titled “In Sickness and in Health? Physical Illness as a Risk Factor for Marital Dissolution in Later Life," and the findings were reported on by large publications. But it turns out the results have serious flaws causing the authors to rush to correct their mistake.

According to Retraction Watch, the first author, assistant professor at Iowa State University, Amelia Karraker "seems to be handling the case quickly and responsibly." The beauty of peer reviewed research is that there are multiple sets of eyes to check your work, which is what led to the discovery of the paper's flaws.

It was her colleagues from Bowling Green State that discovered the error while trying to duplicate the findings. The numbers kept coming up short of what was reported in the original paper.

"I sent them the statistical analysis file, which documents all of the steps as to how we came to all the estimates in the paper. And they pointed out to us, to our horror, that we had miscoded the dependent variable," Karraker tells the outlet.

The mistake had already been printed and republished on multiple media outlets, but the original writers of the paper contacted their editor to alert them of the error. While this error plays a large role in the high risk of divorce when a wife becomes ill, it doesn't completely eliminate it. The risk does still increase but it seems to increase in one health circumstance–heart problems. Other illnesses did not seem to have the same level of divorce risk. So what happened?

Woman in hospital bed

Photo credit: Canva

Well, according to Karraker, not all of the participants finished the study. Turns out the ones that left before the study ended were accidentally coded as having gotten divorced, when that couldn't have been determined since they were no longer participating. Karraker and her co-author got the participant information and data from a previous study conducted by University of Michigan which included data from 2,701 heterosexual marriages.

The study focused on four serious diseases: heart disease, stroke, cancer and lung disease showing an increase in divorce risk if the wife falls ill versus the husband. While Karraker's results were flawed due to the unfortunate mistake, other studies who don't use her results show a significant increase in divorce rates when the wife becomes seriously ill.

In the study "Gender disparity in the rate of partner abandonment in patients with serious medical illness" by Michael J. Glantz, MD et al, the authors explain, "female gender was found to be the strongest predictor of separation or divorce in each cohort." Glantz shares that divorce rate was 11.6% for cancer patients, which is similar to the average. "There was, however, a greater than 6-fold increase in risk after diagnosis when the affected spouse was the woman (20.8% vs 2.9%; P < .001)"

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Family

Mother is 'fuming' that daughter's stepmom tells people she's the biological parent

What would you do?

via Pavel Danilyuk

A stepmother braiding her stepdaughter's hair.

A mother on TikTok has received over 8 million views on a video that recounts a terrible episode that occurred as she was trying to separate from her abusive ex-husband. In the video entitled, “Stepmom tells everyone she is the mom,” Belle Blake recounts a harrowing tale of when she realized that her ex-husband’s wife lied about her role in her daughter Delilah’s life.

Blake tells the story as a “reenactment” because it occurred during a time when she was involved in legal proceedings and couldn’t share it publicly.

As a TikTok user with over 93,000 followers, Blake told the salacious story, knowing it would attract attention, which she used to promote the Safe At Home Program or Address Confidentiality Program.

It all started when Blake picked up her daughter, Delilah, from dance class and the other mothers thought she was the stepmom. Delilah’s real stepmom, Stephanie, had told everyone she was her biological mother.

@mrsbelleblake

I’m 1000% done #stepparents #cheater #husbandandwife #divorce Disclaimer: this is a reenactment inspired by my own experiences with domestic abuse. I am no longer around the people involved. This is to bring awareness to the Safe At Home Program (Address Confidentiality Program), this program provides a decoy address to victims of domestic abuse so their abusers can’t find them. Domestic Abuse Hotline: 800-799-7233

“Her stepmom has been telling everyone that she is her biological mom. Like having conversations about when she was pregnant with her," Blake says in the video.

The stepmother had even claimed that Blake’s birth story was her own. "I gave birth to her, weird. And [a mom at the dance class] goes, 'What? No, no, no, Stephanie gave birth to her. Stephanie was telling us all about the preeclampsia that she had. She had a seizure after she was born...'" she continued.

"This woman stole my birth story! My birth story! That I went through. She's out here telling people that she was pregnant with Delilah, and she had preeclampsia. And she had seizures! She had to stay in the hospital with a magnesium drip! Excuse me?" Blake says while getting progressively angrier.

Blake goes on to clarify that Stephanie wasn’t even around when Delilah was born; she was still in high school.

To add further insult, Stephanie said she named Delilah after hearing the song “Hey There Delilah” on the radio, which was Blake's story as well. "But I can't believe that somebody would actually do that. She went on to tell people how she picked out the name. Delilah. Like talked about, how ... this woman is like trying to be me," Blake says,

Stephanie was able to get away with her dishonesty for so long due to strict visitation rules. Blake never had her on days she went to dance class.

Blake’s disturbing story inspired many to rally behind her in the comments. “Go through the family courts, get custody changed and file a restraining order,” ArtisticCircus urged. “This is like - your daughter shouldn’t be alone with this woman territory,” Morgan Elisa Strickell added.

“That’s actually scary,” Alisha wrote, to which Blake responded, “Terrifying!”

The good news is that these days, Blake and her children have no connection with her ex-husband or Stephanie and aren’t old enough to remember them or their shocking behavior. Blake now has sole custody of her kids and is married to a "fantastic guy" and "everything is great."

Throughout her video series on the identity-stealing stepmother, Blake was eager to mention that she was sharing it to promote a program that helps women escape domestic violence known as the Safe At Home Program or the Address Confidentiality Program.

To learn more about this program that allows victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking or other types of crime to receive mail at a confidential address while keeping their actual address undisclosed, visit the National Domestic Abuse Hotline’s website.

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