Why Marriage Can Sometimes Ruin Careers

Marriage can ruin careers for both men and women. Why and how?

This blog is mostly about digital marketing, startups, and careers. I am not a relationship guru and this is not relationship advice. However, I cannot stop thinking about how much marriages & romantic relationships are interlinked with our careers and life goals.

After years of soul-crushing and exciting experiences of marriage, divorce, and marriage again, I have tried to internally understand a model that works best for most men and women.

Having spent so much time pondering, learning, making mistakes, and paying huge costs, it would be a disservice to me not to share my mental models with my readers.

What I am writing here is just my learnings, observations, and life experience. I request my readers (especially women) not to take this as misogyny. You will not take it in the wrong way if you have the patience to read the entire article word by word and ponder about the truth in my words.

I have huge respect for the women in my life and their support in helping me reach my goals. However, I have not been in a position to reciprocate that favor where I was responsible for helping a woman reach their goals. In this article, you will understand why I (and other men) never had or will have that option due to objective truths and laws of evolution and biology.

Most of the content in this article will be from the perspective of a man, because I have no other way to see the world. However, if you disagree with me, feel free to share your intellectual and deep comments.

This is a complex topic, so let’s understand it through an analogy.

The Ship, The Captain, and Passengers

Imagine a dock (refer to the above image). There are ships and there are passengers. Assume that the captains of the ship are men and women are passengers. Soon you will understand why there are no male passengers, and very few woman captains. Read on…

Assume that, you (as a man) are the captain of the ship. You also own the ship. Some men have small boats, and other men have big ships. The ship is your vehicle to go to a destination.

Your ship is your skills, business, money, career, and network.

In short, resources. Resources that will take you (and your passengers if applicable) to your destination.

You just can’t have a ship. You also need skills to handle the journey and steer the ship. Many people who inherited ships from their fathers were not good navigators because they didn’t build the ships by themselves. (Spoilt rich kids usually fail in business). You gain those skills by taking the ship out into the sea for short trips. (Doing a side hustle, getting a job, building a startup).

You also need a destination to go to. These are your goals of what you want to achieve out of your life. If you are a good captain with good navigation skills, and you also have a strong and fast ship, it still would be of waste if you do not have a destination to go to.

There are so many well-off people in the world with no idea where they want to go in life. They are captains with ships and no destination. No one will want to become a passenger in such a ship.

So the three skills you need as a man to survive are:

• One: Have a ship or a boat (money and resources)

• Two: The skills to navigate the sea (skills & mastery)

• Three: A destination to go to (a goal and a dream)

Passengers, not surprisingly, are optional.

A captain can travel to his destination even if they do not have passengers. Ratan Tata built a business empire and he was single and never married.

Why Take On Passengers?

Most captains want to take on passengers (get married or have a girlfriend) because they do not want to take up a long journey without any companionship.

Passengers (women) make the journey more fun, sweet, and filled with love and beauty. But if captains take the wrong passengers, they might sink the boat or add to the difficulty of travel.

Some passengers might not accept the captain’s destination and try to redirect the ship to a place they want to go (even though they have not built the ship). That’s why it is so important to choose who you marry.

Some women passengers might try to become captains for the ship that they did not build and make the captain a dummy. But if something goes wrong, the captain will still be blamed. They will try to take authority without taking responsibility. Responsibility without authority, in the context of marriage and work, is slavery.

Why Can’t Women Be Captains?

Is it only required that men should be captains?

Why can’t women build their own ships and become their own captains with their own destinations? They absolutely can. That’s the modern revolution. Women empowerment. Yes, no problem.

But there is a problem.

Women, when they want to get married, usually do not want to take on men who are younger than them and men who have no skills, no money, and no career as passengers.

Women usually want to go as a passengers on another captain’s ship.

If women want a career and also a relationship with someone they are attracted to, they are often forced to choose between the two, and most women abandon their careers to choose their relationship. They just can’t have their cake and eat it too.

Men need not choose between their careers and relationships. They can get both. But only if they have become captains and own their ships. And this looks unfair to many women. Let’s understand why…

Women Don’t Like Male Passengers

If women are equally attracted to young men with no money or skills (just like male captains are completely ok taking on a young female passenger with no career of her own) then there is absolutely no problem. The universe will be balanced.

But they don’t like male passengers. They want captains.

Men who don’t have ships and are not captains, usually do not have the option to go as a passenger in a woman’s ship where she is the captain. Men do not have an option to go into another man’s ship either (unless they are in the rainbow).

Because there is only one option left: Men have no other option, but to build their own ships and become their own captains. They invest years if not decades into building their ships and honing their skills.

So most men build it. Once they build their own ship they observe that there are plenty of women passengers who are ready to get aboard their ship (become a wife or a girlfriend) and help the captain get to his destination.

Men are also not necessarily attracted to women who are very accomplished because they are not good passengers. Women can’t abandon very good careers and men don’t want to abandon their own careers as well. Gridlock. This is called the two-body problem.

It’s completely socially acceptable for a 25-year-old woman to marry a 30-year-old man who has a career and some resources, even if the woman comes with empty pockets. But it’s not socially acceptable for a 25-year-old man with no career to marry a 30-year-old woman who earns a lot of money.

Men did not create these rules. Women did. Women usually reject such men and hence men have no option but to become captains of their own ship. And once they do, they get to keep both careers and women of their choice.

Women often ignore the unfairness that men who are not captains never get any captain to take them as a passengers, but pretty much all women can become passengers and there are enough captains to accommodate all women-passengers. Isn’t that an advantage that women have? Women can still get married if they don’t have a career. But men just can’t.

Women Jumping Ships

Most women in the modern-day world do not end up getting married at 23 years of age. Most women build careers where they invest at least 5+ years into their identity and skills and end up having goals of their own.

When it comes to “settling down with a man” she doesn’t want a male passenger who will be dependent on her for income. She is not attracted to such men. The only men who are even visible to her are captains of other ships.

Now if the woman wants to have a life partner, she cannot ask that captain to abandon his ship and get on to her boat. So they end up abandoning their boats and jumping into a larger ship as a passenger. Voluntarily.

Modern women usually end up complaining that the “patriarchal men” are suppressing women and their careers.

No.

In almost all of the cases, women proactively abandon their own careers and goals because they do not want to take men as passengers. They only want captains. They choose to become passengers because that’s their priority in life.

No matter how much we wish we were all equal, the biological and evolutionary attraction mechanisms dictate to us that it’s optimal for men to build and have goals and optimal for women to join the man in his journey to his destination.

The only way women can be the captains of their own ships for their whole lives is

1. if they should be ready to travel alone or

2. if they should take on male passengers who are young and have no careers to support them.

But women rarely marry a man of lower income and status than them.

Men who don’t have the 3 skills, the ability to build a ship, be a captain, and have a goal usually suffer because no woman (or man) wants them to take them as a passenger. It’s a harsh life out there. Men must perform. If men build those skills, they can have a lot of passengers waiting to get on the ship because the journey to the destination is worth it (even if it’s the destination of the man).

Be Careful With Your Marriage Choices

From my personal experience, I can confidently say that your ship can be capsized by the wrong passenger. Be careful (as a man) about who you are taking on as passengers. Once you set sail into the sea, you cannot abandon your passengers no matter how difficult they are to handle.

For men, the passenger should be:

• Not rocking the ship

• Not change your destination to suit their needs

• Won’t try to over-throw you as the captain in the middle of the sea

And remember, a passenger is not a must to get to your destination. Modi sir and Ratan Tata sir have been able to set sail without passengers. Marriage is an option. However, it might not look like it because of social pressure.

And if you are a woman, be careful which ship you are boarding. Some bad captains lie about the strength of their ships and their ability to navigate the seas. Once you get on to the wrong ship (marrying the wrong person) and set sail into the ocean, it’s difficult to find another ship.

For women, the captain should be:

• Having a strong ship (not be broke because it’s a long journey)

• Not lie about the ability of his ship

• Truly state his destination without lying

• Take on only one passenger (monogamy) and not have any secret passengers hidden

• Have the ability to navigate rough seas (when the family is in dark times, men should lead and support).

• Have hobbies and careers that can be managed within the ship as a passenger. Take detours in a speed boat while the boat is at a port. But get back to the final destination of your captain. Contain your career within the context of the marriage. Otherwise, you will be forced to choose between the two.

For women who want to become their own captains:

• You can travel alone with no passengers (just like male captains do). No man will try to suppress your growth.

• You can jump ship and become a passenger on a ship that you want. You have to retire from your captaincy.

• You can take on male passengers (if you are ok with it)

• Do not force captains of big ships (who you are attracted to) and try to convince them to abandon their ships. They won’t. They have options. And if they comply, you might lose attraction towards them.

• Understand that there is no way that two ships can sail to the same destination. You have to compromise. There can be only one captain.

Women, in general, want men to take leadership and they only want to marry strong captains. Men did not set these rules. Women did. And there are evolutionary reasons for that which are too deep and beyond the scope of this article.

What do you think? Does this model fit with your life experience? Leave a comment below.

This article has been inspired by the book “The Value of Others” by Orion Taraban. The entire ship/captain/passenger analogy is from a chapter in this book. Full credits to Orion.