If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you.

-Winnie the Pooh

- John Lennon

“I can’t win. I won’t win. I don’t want to win.”

- Toast of the National Chauvinistic Husbands Association

Apparently Japan is looking down the barrel of a major marital crisis because of recent legislation that allows wifes to receive 1/2 of their husband’s retirement in the event of divorce. While most men have blown off the threat, there’s a small group that attend AA-style meetings with the goal of rebuilding their relationships with their wives after years of neglect.

I found this quote fascinating:

“I think my generation especially has grown up in a very feudalistic era,” he said. “I never said I was sorry. When I came home from work, I would say I want to eat dinner, I want a bath and I want to go to bed. I had no time to talk to my wife.”…

“He didn’t exist in the family,” [his wife] said. “It was almost like a family of mother and children, like there was no father. Not only was he not there, I couldn’t get in touch with him at all.”

Hum…  I can think of some other societies where the same things happened, but where divorce was more readily available.  Could this “corporate culture,” as one woman described it, contribute to such high divorce rates in the U.S. 20-30 years ago?  I wonder, too, how many marriages exist like this today in the U.S.

Learn to Be Nice to Your Wife, or Pay the Price. (Washington Post)

One last note, I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE sentences that include some permutation of the phrase “back then it was a very feudalistic era.”  This is especially common in quotes from China, and it appears Japan, where the past 100 years has changed the political landscape.  The choice of words always has me thinking about medieval England, rather than some place in Asia.  Not to mention they blame EVERY social vice on feudalism. (Which, of course, is not to say we don’t have our own peculiar cultural scapegoats.)

I don’t believe it. Men in countries that practice polygamy live, on average, 12% longer than men in monogamous countries. 12% is like 10 years! I would have thought having more than one wife would drastically reduce life span.

Coincidentally, the world’s oldest man died this week. He was 138 years old and monogamous. Maybe he should have taken a second wife?

Angela forwarded a letter to Dear Abby to me today from a guy who doesn’t want to spend $10,000 on an engagement ring and would rather put the money in an annuity. Although the guy in the letter sounds like a jerk, I’m sympathetic to his view.

When Angela and I started “negotiating” our engagement, I was opposed to buying an expensive diamond engagement ring.  I wasn’t going to waste money on crystalline carbon. “It’s just one covalent bond removed from pencil lead!” I argued. The rarity of diamonds is controlled by DeBeers, and I knew artificial diamonds were becoming practically indistinguishable from real ones. Instead, I proposed that we invest the money we would have spent on a ring into a mutual fund. I even offered to roll up the monthly statements and tape them around her finger if she needed something to wear. 

Needless to say, I lost that argument. Angela got her bling, and because the S&P500 is only up 3.3% since our wedding day, there’s not much for me to complain about. But I still think there’s a future in engagement investments.