You’ll Live Longer

EVIDENCE: Research published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health shows that people that never marry are almost two-thirds more likely to suffer from premature death, with single men more adversely affected than women.

DOWNSIDE: True marriage may make you long for your own death, but statistics prove married men live longer.

UPSIDE: If there is no afterlife you have spent more time ruining the environment, and if there is a hell marriage will probably get credit for time served.

Kids Less Likely to Kill People

EVIDENCE: The nation’s mayors, as well as police officers, social workers, probation officers, and court officials, consistently point to family break up as the most important source of rising rates of crime. Research indicates a direct correlation between crime rates and the number of single-parent families in a neighborhood. Violent offending and recidivism was increased up to 8-fold if the cohort male member had been born and raised in a single-mother family over most of his childhood. Black children from single- parent households are twice as likely to commit crimes as black children from a family where the father is present.

DOWNSIDE: Paternity is only an accusation – marrying will make you a surefire potential victim for child support, if you spread your seed and run you are significantly less likely to get blamed for it.

UPSIDE: Children who aren’t in jail are more likely to visit you in your old age, and that could keep the gun out of your mouth on Christmas one year.

You’ll Make More Money

EVIDENCE: The median annual income of parents who are in an intact first marriage is $41,000. By contrast, the annual median income of cohabiting couples with children is $33,000, and the annual median income of never-married mothers is only $15,000.

DOWNSIDE: You are gambling for more money, divorce is probably one of the most expensive failed life decision you can make, second only to raging drug habit.

UPSIDE: Money can’t buy you happiness – but it can buy a house in a neighborhood without scummy poor people and a bigger flat screen TV.

Married People Are Happier

EVIDENCE: The General Social Survey regularly asks adults whether they are “very happy,” “pretty happy,” or “not too happy.” Married persons are twice as likely to report being very happy when compared with divorced or never-married adults.

DOWNSIDE: True married people are happier – but what the study fails to mention is that divorced are the most miserable. Think of marriage as Russian Roulette, if the wheel lands on divorce you might take a bullet.

UPSIDE: If you wind up having one of those Hallmark greeting card marriages that would be more fun than dredging single bars for ugly chicks.

Better Sex Life

EVIDENCE: According to a University of Chicago National Sex Survey, 43 percent of married men reported having sex at least twice a week, while only 1.26 percent of single men not cohabiting had sex that often. 50 percent of married men and 42 percent of married women find sex physically and emotionally satisfying, while only 39 percent of cohabiting men and 39 percent of cohabiting women do.

DOWNSIDE: That is a pretty expensive 3 percent (single women 39% satisfying vs. 42% satisfying for married woman). On the downside you are having sex with the same person over and over for the rest of your life – I love chocolate cookie dough ice cream but if that was the only ice cream I ever had I would grow to hate it.

UPSIDE:From these stats is does appear as if you are more likely to have slightly better sex if married.

Doubles Your Savings

EVIDENCE: Married households accumulate far more than twice the amount of any other households, or an accumulated a total of about $410,000.

DOWNSIDE: Many man stay married to simply keep their nice house and savings.

UPSIDE: With social security failing and health care in it’s present state you might need that extra wealth to pay for that heart surgery to save your life later on.

Safer for Women

EVIDENCE: Wives are far less likely to be crime victims than single women. When all crimes are considered, single and divorced women are four to five times more likely to be victims. They are ten times more likely than wives to be victims of rape and three times more likely to be victims of aggravated assault.

DOWNSIDE: Of all violent crimes against partners that occurred between 1979 and 1987, 65 percent were committed by boyfriends or ex-husbands – so if you leave your little safety bubble you may pay for it with your life.

UPSIDE: Most women surveyed prefer not to be raped or murdered.

Kids Less Likely to be Poor

EVIDENCE: Children in married-couple families were much less likely to be living in poverty than children living only with their mothers. In 2005, 9 percent of children in married-couple families were living in poverty, compared with 43 percent in female-householder families.

DOWNSIDE: If you get divorced all of your disposable income will go towards them, and pay for ex wife to get a new car and date ‘uncle steve’ or mommy’s new sleep over buddy/girl’s softball coach.

UPSIDE: Having kids is a great retirement plan, you can always call and guilt them over the pain of child birth or the price of their braces to extort money out of them.

Avoid A Heart Attack

EVIDENCE: Married men are less likely to die of heart disease than bachelors. Scientists looked at men with mildly high blood pressure and found that after 3 years of marriage, the happily married men had healthier hearts than their unmarried brothers.

DOWNSIDE: Marriage was 7th on the list for heart saving steps – eating fish and buying a dog were much higher up and didn’t cost several thousand dollars a month in alimony and child support.

UPSIDE: If there is no afterlife you have spent more time ruining the environment, and if there is a hell marriage will probably get credit for time served.

Forces You to Grow Up

EVIDENCE: Married men drink less, fight less, and are less likely to engage in criminal activity than their single peers. Married husbands and fathers are significantly more involved and affectionate with their wives and children than men in cohabiting relationships. Single men are five times more likely to commit violent crimes than married men

DOWNSIDE: Married men have to call and ask their wives before they do anything fun which pretty much rules out doing any of the really fun/dangerous/illegal stuff.

UPSIDE: Being more responsible could keep you out of some really stupid situations like waking up from a drinking binge with a girl that is so ugly you want to chew your arm off rather than wake her up.