Andrew Tate, the self-described professional pimp who has become a niche celebrity for the dregs of the alt-right, posed a question that has now been seen over 10 million times on X: What’s the benefit of marriage for a man?
The question was purely rhetorical, of course. Tate has long made his contempt for the institution quite clear.
“The forcing of a monogamous society mitigates the true distribution curves of mating pairs – it’s about CONTROL to prevent the strongest of men having larger continuances of their bloodlines,” Tate wrote two days after the initial post. “They fear men like me having 9 baby machines and 40 children. So they try and tell you it’s wrong. Truthfully, there’s nothing more right.”
It would be easy to explain the benefits of marriage for a man as a matter of pure statistics.
By age 50, married men earn nearly twice as much money as single men, and by age 65, a married man can expect to live 14% longer than an unmarried one. Married men also have more sex and more satisfying sex. The majority of married men report having sex at least once a week, compared to nearly one in three unmarried people who report having zero sex in the past year. The majority of married men say they’re extremely satisfied with their sex lives, with the University of Chicago Booth School of Business finding that marriage confers a 30-point “happiness premium” compared to single people.
It is true that institutionalized monogamy of the Western European marriage pattern inadvertently mitigated what Tate refers to as “societal disruption from inferior low quality men who wouldn’t be able to get a wife otherwise.” As Joseph Heinrich of Harvard writes about in his instant classic, The WEIRDest People in the World, the Catholic Church‘s standards for marriage both inculcated the conditions that created universal literacy, wealth, and modernity, as well as mitigating the elevated crime seen in societies with massive numbers of unmarried men. It follows that Tate, who is the subject of four separate criminal investigations in three different countries over accusations of rape and human trafficking, would theoretically benefit from monogamy in the legal department.
But the single best rationale for marriage is indeed biblical, as God creates the first woman, Eve, to be a “helper comparable” to Adam.
Genesis 2:18 is one of the verses most often exploited by chauvinists masquerading as Christians to claim that wives are supposed to play constant second fiddle to their husbands. By this logic, Tate doesn’t need marriage — he evidently has a number of women to serve as mere “helpers,” right?
Wrong. The actual Hebrew translation of this “helper comparable” is ezer kenegdo. In her new book about marriage, pastor Ann Wilson writes about the 21 times the Old Testament uses the term ezer kenegdo.
“Twice, it refers to Eve, the first woman,” Wilson writes. “Another three times, it refers to powerful nations that came to help Israel when it was being besieged. But astoundingly, the other sixteen times refer to God as our helper. God is the one who comes alongside in our time of need. That is the true meaning of ezer. It was enlightening to learn this because I been interpreting helper as a mere servant who performed boring, menial tasks. But in actuality, there is nothing subservient or inferior about being a helper. The term actually carries the idea of strengthening someone in a way they cannot do for themselves, which reveals a powerful understanding of God’s unique strength and influence given to the woman.”
Yes, marriage brings better sex, bigger paychecks, and a happier life. Societies that promote marriage experience less crime and more social order. But nothing beats the institution’s original intention: bringing the power of God to your side in the form of a spouse.