Giveaway and excerpt from the book "A Singular Life: Secrets to Living Well With or Without a Traditional Partner"
From Chapter 2: Is Marriage a Trick?
From bridal dolls to romantic comedies, women in older generations seem to have been groomed from early childhood to make their wedding day the highlight of their existence. But how many women go through the painstaking wedding preparations, hold a beautiful ceremony, go on their honeymoon, and upon their return, realize they have no idea what they got themselves into?
Women have long been told that men don’t want to commit, that marriage is a drag for them, that men don’t want a “ball and chain” waiting for them at home every night. And sure, there are some men who do feel that way. But many men do want to get married – because as author Dr. Venus Nicolino has noted on podcasts like Uncut and Uncensored, marriage is not only designed for men – it’s designed by them.
Do you think men would have created marriage in the first place, thousands of years ago, if there wasn’t anything in it for them? Yes, it was often a business arrangement among the wealthy, but poorer couples got married, too.
According to Dr. Nicolino, a study conducted from the 1970s to the 2020s shows that married men have more sex than single men, live longer, report a higher quality of life, and report making more money.
But does their happiness come at a cost to their wives? Because conversely, since the 1970s, married women have been reported to die sooner than single women, experience a lower quality of life, experience a lower quality of sex, and make less money.
Single women with no kids, on the other hand, have been reported to be “the happiest subset of humans on the goddamn planet,” according to Dr. Nicolino.
And yet, society has succeeded in making women feel like it’s they who are the lucky ones to get a guy to commit to them for the rest of their lives. And many women are so blinded by the excitement and beauty of the wedding day and a vision of love and a white picket-fence that they do not clearly perceive what their marriage will look like on the other side.
Beyond the wedding day
There are certainly great, solid relationships and marriages out there. But with roughly half of marriages ending in divorce, there are clearly ones that are not so great. And often, women cite an inequal distribution of household labor as the cause for divorce.
According to American Survey Center, research shows that as of 2023, married women still do a disproportionate amount of household work, whether it’s laundry, cooking, or cleaning. The disparity grows worse among those who are parents. The survey found that mothers are far more involved in scheduling playdates and making medical decisions for their children. The only area where men did more than women was home repair and yard work.
New York Times reporter Claire Cain Miller found that even young men who welcome gender equality are doing far less work around the house than their wives. So as young women invest more time and money in their education and professional endeavors, there is much more at stake.
I have witnessed such a dynamic first-hand. A friend of a friend, we’ll call her Katie, married a super progressive, seemingly open-minded guy we will call Chris. I only met Chris once, and liked him a lot, but I was shocked to later learn about his backward views on domestic chores. Apparently when Katie and Chris were preparing to host a birthday party for their two-year-old son, and Katie was eight months pregnant, she wanted to hire a cleaning service to prepare their house for guests, several of whom were staying overnight. Chris did not like that at all. He said that, to his knowledge, his female relatives never hired anyone to clean their homes and hiring someone else to do it just seemed off.
Poor Katie almost started to cry. She was still working full-time at this point and could literally be giving birth at any moment. She was sweating buckets daily in their un-air-conditioned house in the late summer heat, and she was experiencing great general discomfort. She asked Chris if he was planning to clean the house himself, despite already knowing the answer. He looked surprised at the question and offered a half-hearted attempt to help.
Many men of the Gen X and millennial generations love to remember how their mothers ran their households growing up and always had dinner on the table. But they fail to remember that their mothers often did not have nine-to-five jobs. These days and in this economy, it is much harder for women to stay home and focus on the house and family – although many would love to do so. They are still expected to work full-time jobs and complete the vast majority of the household labor. This expectation is one of the leading factors of divorce.
Want to keep reading? You can buy the book here! Otherwise, if you can wait, I’m giving away 10 print editions of the book (each valued at $25 USD). There’s two different ways to get a chance to win a free copy: 1) Become a free or paid subscriber of my Substack here, or 2) send me a private message on Reddit at u/ASingularLife with the word “giveaway.”
If you’re interested, do one of the above by August 31 at 11:59 PM ET/PT. Then I will randomly select 10 winners and notify them by September 5 via email or private message, at which point we will ask for your shipping info.
OFFICIAL RULES:
No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited. Eligibility: Open to legal residents of the U.S. age 18 or older. Winner Selection: Winners will be chosen at random using random number generator on September 1, 2025, and notified within 5 days. Odds: Odds depend on number of eligible entries received. Privacy: Information collected (email address, shipping info) will be used only to administer this giveaway and will not be shared or sold. Sponsor: This giveaway is sponsored solely by Hail Mary Publishing, not affiliated with Substack or any social media platform. Shipping: Paperback prizes will only be shipped within the U.S.