When it comes to the opportunity cost of marriage, at all times, we are speaking in generalities and averages. Obviously, there are outstanding, amazing marriages and relationships in the world. What we are trying to do here is expound upon some of the rational reasons why men no longer see marriage in general as a good investment. and we will look at it from the perspective of investing in a company.
What is the definition of an opportunity cost?
“Opportunity costs represent the potential benefits that an individual, investor, or business misses out on when choosing one alternative over another.”
Investopedia
This is the business definition of an opportunity cost, but the same thing can apply to relationships. When a man marries a woman, there is an opportunity cost to that decision. Because he is giving up the opportunity to have relationships with all other women, specifically relationships with a sexual nature.
Obviously, you can get into a discussion about open marriages and various other permutations and combinations of marriage which are at their core perversions of marriage. But in this discussion we will be talking about marriage in the traditional sense, the way it should only be talked about. – between one man and one woman.
Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
Genesis 2:24
Again, a married man has given up the opportunity for all other relationships.
In this way, marriage has a substantial opportunity cost, and it is likely one of the many things men fear about marriage. While many men are accused of being afraid of commitment, looking at it from a rational business perspective you can understand why they are so fearful!
Opportunity cost is frightening for business owners. Opportunity cost is scary to people who are deciding on a college major. Because when making that final decision about a business or a major, they give up the option for all other college majors. In fact, there is less finality to college and business than there is with marriage. If you are going to be stressed out about these small decisions that can be reversible, how much more should you be stressed about the decisions that will affect who you spend your life with?
Getting married is like investing in the stock of a company.
For the purpose of this discussion, we will paint an analogy between the stock market in marriage, to maintain the business perspective. A stock has a specific and quantifiable opportunity cost. Because when you invest, you are taking a certain amount of money that could be spent on anything and investing it into one item. You lock the funds into one specific item. And by doing so you lose the opportunity to use that money for anything else.
The same thing applies to marriage, it’s like a stock. You lose the opportunity to use your time or sexual nature for anything other than what you have confined it to within that marriage relationship.
We should note that we make this investment voluntarily. No one is forcing us against our will to invest in the stock of marriage.
Why does anyone invest in anything at all? It is because they believe that at a future moment in time it will be of greater value to have invested in that item that to have not invested. People believe that stocks will increase in value and eventually pay dividends, this is why they invest in them. Similarly with marriage, even though there’s an opportunity cost, people invest in marriage because they believe that in the future it will have greater value than what the relationship has at the present moment.
Understanding both the cots and the value potential for marriage, we can see how many individuals get married and have regrets about it soon thereafter. They have regrets because they judge the value of the marriage too early and have not given the marriage stock enough time to appreciate in value or to start paying respectable dividends. It takes time to grow a loving, valuable marriage. It doesn’t happen instantly without any effort or further investment. Just like a stock portfolio requires continual investment to build to any appreciable level.
The lesson here is that we should understand both the cost and the potential of marriage and not expect it to start paying immediate dividends to us on the first night. Even though there are few immediate benefits [access to sex/ companionship/sharing of responsibilities which reduced the necessary workload for everyone], many of the long-term benefits don’t show up until significant time and energy investment in the relationship has been made. This is the way it was designed to be, and this is important.
Stocks have an opportunity cost.
We’ve already noted briefly before that stocks have an opportunity cost. If you pay $50 for a stock, you cannot use that same $50 to buy something else that has immediate value in the present moment. But you do so believing that in the future that stop will be worth $100 or that it will pay dividends.
Stocks pay dividends.
Some types of stocks pay dividends periodically. When a company increases in value, and if stock increases in value, that increase in value is shared among the people who own stock in that company. The size of the dividend is usually related to the respective growth of the company. Meaning that you will get larger dividends when a company increases its value by a million dollars than you would if the company increased its value by $500,000.
Not all stocks pay dividends but for the sake of this example, we will stick with dividend-paying stocks.
Individuals buy stocks with the idea that in the future they will start providing them value in return. People believe that the stock will pay them dividends at a future date that they can then use for further investment or at their own personal discretion.
Individuals do not buy stocks with the idea that the stock will go down in value and end up costing them their initial investment.
People do not get married believing in their rational minds that they will be divorced shortly. Yet this happens to so many people due to poor market research on their spouse, personal lack of discipline, or any other of the plethora of reasons people divorce one another.
Stocks have risks and can go to zero.
If you buy stock in a company and that company goes bankrupt, the value of its stock will go to zero and you lose your initial investment money. This is what makes some stocks “risky”. You can try to reduce this risk by analyzing the financial track record of the stock and predicting how it will perform, or by diversifying your investment into multiple stocks.
At least at this present time, you cannot diversify your investment into the marriage stock. It is a single-time buy, and it requires you to use 100% of your sexual/romantic relationship capital. This makes the investment highly risky.
In what investment in your life would you risk 100% of your money? If you were to make such an investment, there should be no value in your mind of the value and potential of the company you are investing in. Investing everything you have in one stock that seems to be risky to you would be foolish – but many people do this very thing with their marriages.
Stocks have a historic track record and dividends can be rationally analyzed by examining those who own the stock.
If I am interested in buying a stock, I can look at how well the stock has performed over a period of time. Or I can talk to people who own stock in a company and ask them what the dividend payout is like from year to year. Using this rational method, I can make a scientific and precise determination about the value of a stock and decide if I want to invest in it.
The same applies to marriage, I can look at other people who have invested in the stock of marriage and determine if the historical track record of the stock is appropriate given the opportunity cost and risk, and additionally evaluate if the dividends are worth the cost of buying that stock.
Every rational individual has to ask himself if marriage is going to provide him with greater value than what it costs him. People don’t take action that eventually cost them down the road, at least not intentionally. We always act with the idea that we will improve the situation for our future selves. No rational individual makes a conscious choice to make life worse for himself later down the road.
People are discontent with the outcomes of marriage.
Many people today are dissatisfied with the outcomes and dividends of marriage. They can look around them and observe people that are incredibly dissatisfied in their marriage and who happen to be incredibly vocal about that dissatisfaction. We would be wise to remember that perhaps the value of the stock may be high but the people who complain about losing money in this investment are extraordinarily vocal about their personal experience, which may or may not represent the experience of the whole. People are more likely to be vocal about negative experiences than positive experiences, including investments and relationships.
What is tragic is that many young men today observe individuals who are married, and come to the conclusion that the investment isn’t worth the opportunity cost and risk. Some of them make this determination merely because of the extraordinarily vocal minority of men who had breathtakingly bad experiences investing in marriage. And this is tragic for society as a whole, as societies become more stable when marriages are built and families are established.
The opportunity cost of marriage is high.
When a man commits to one woman for life, he rarely knows what he is doing. do you really think people would get married if they knew that in a few short years they would be divorced? Even though this is the case for many marriages, it’s obvious that people don’t know in advance what they’re getting into or they would make different decisions.
For a man, the opportunity cost of marriage is extraordinarily high. He must give up on sexual partners for the sake of a single marital relationship. Considering a man’s natural sexual drive, this is a difficult sacrifice. But again, many make this sacrifice believing that it will be a worthwhile investment that provides value and dividends at a future date.
We need to recognize that for many rational men, simply observing the opportunity cost of marriage is enough for them to say “I’m out” when it comes to investing in the marriage stock.
The current dividends of marriage are low.
Men can rationally observe older men in miserable marriage relationships and make judgments about the value of marriage as a whole. By the time men are middle-aged and older, their marriage should be paying massive dividends. A man should feel a massive sense of fulfillment for a life well-lived, a wonderfully enjoyable marriage relationship, and a legacy established through children. But instead what he has is mountains of weighty responsibility, the inability to ever retire, and a contentious wife to live with.
Better to dwell in a corner of a housetop,
Proverbs 21:9
Than in a house shared with a contentious woman.
If these are the dividends that men have to look forward to in the middle and end of life in a marriage relationship, why would they ever invest in the marriage stock in the first place? Better to be alone than in this relationship is the message taught in the above Proverb.
With men referring to their wives as “the old ball and chain” and other similar idioms, why is anyone shocked that younger men aren’t wanting to get married? Are you shocked that young men aren’t investing in marriage stock when it has this kind of PR?
If you constantly talk about the pitifully low-paying dividends of a company, the worthlessness of the company, and how difficult it is to invest and maintain investment in the company, why would anyone ever buy stock in that company? The only life commentary that some men provide is negative press about the institution of marriage and they’re shocked when people aren’t getting married anymore.
Marriage can “go to zero” and its risk manifests.
In its most extreme case, marriage, like a stock, can go to 0. This is when a marriage ends in divorce. In the modern day, women are initiating the vast majority of these divorces. Not only are they initiating them, but it seems to be based on nothing. This makes the marriage stock extraordinarily risky.
If someone told you that a company’s risk of going to zero was 50% every year and that the company could actually close its doors for any reason, and still take half of the money you’ve invested in it for themself, would you invest in it? This is the business structure of the modern marriage relationship, so it should be no surprise that men are uninterested in investing in something this risky.
In the end, marriage really is more like a business than a stock. This is because you cannot really influence what a company does unless you are the one who owns the majority of the shares. But in a business, you make substantial investments, and also then can work to direct and guide the company to something better.
When viewed this way, you realize that the business of your marriage is under the control of the people engaged in that relationship. Value is added to subtracted from the relationship because of the decisions of the business partners.
The business of marriage can provide massive massive value if you will take the time to invest in it and grow it. Or it can be the worst decision you make – it is up to you. Make good decisions. Decisions in marriage is a topic for another post.
But is the opportunity cost of marriage worth all the risks and benefits? That is left to each individual. What do you think?
One thought on “The Opportunity Cost of Marriage”