State of the (Marital) Union
When: Oct 26th, 2005 10:27:07 am - Subscribe
I'm feeling: confuzzled
Talk, Opinion, Music, Life, Stuff: Life
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." Not my words, I hasten to add, before I am accused of plagiarism. The first sentence of that awesome book Pride and Prejudice still rings true today, even though people pretend that they don’t see the need for that institution.
So I was chatting with someone about the prevalence of sugar daddies, and now sugar mummies. These are the older, married folk of society who have affairs with younger members of the opposite sex, i.e. sugar daddy gets a young girl who he piles with money and expensive gifts and gets an especially warm bed in return. A sugar mummy is the female version. For a long time sugar daddies were the norm in society, partly because men have more opportunity to accumulate wealth and power. These men of "stature" still attract women at their feet like flies to rotting meat.
Sugar mummies are more interesting, more so, in the African context where such ideas do not apply. It’s not an issue of whether it is right or wrong, moral or immoral, dating and marrying older women is just not African. Take it or leave it.
But then feminism came along, and there was an outbreak of sugar mummies. These women have beaten men at their own game. They may be wealthy, lonely women trapped in loveless marriages, whose husbands are getting a little extra marital loving. So they go out and do the same, after all, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. And the young men are not complaining!! Would you, if you had women beating down your door?
This phenomenon is also encouraged by the hard economic times and a lack of jobs for the youth. Sugar daddies and mummies started adulthood in a time when jobs were common like air. 20-30 years later, the concept of job availability and security is at display in the museum. If you look for a job for a long time in this harsh and competitive environment, and you can’t find any, (and you have bills to pay), what do you do? Get a sugar someone!!
Any way, back to this person; he is not amused by the shortage of marriageable women. "Sugar people" have totally obscured the courtship landscape. Check out this scenario: A guy of say 25, with little in terms of material possessions to his name, wants an wifey. He started working at 22, so he doesn’t have a lot. Like a typical bachelor, he has 1 (plastic) cup, one spoon, 1 (small) cooking pot, 1 chair, 1 (undersize) bed and a huge state-of-the-art entertainment system.
A lady of 25 has more material possessions (and a better furnished house) than he does, courtesy of her sugar daddy. Of course, the lady wont dare hook up with a broke dude. The dude is now resigned to non marital bliss until his net worth increases. What is he to do? End of scenario.
I finished reading Pride and Prejudice for the fifth time (love that book!), and I still don’t know what to think of the situation. Its not that all women have sugar daddies! No, but they are a blip on the dating radar that cannot be wished away for some people. So, is my friend looking in the wrong place, or is he looking in the wrong place purposefully because he has commitment-o-phobia? Or are there no women to marry? Heck, do we need to marry? Hmmm.
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