Think we Traditional Catholics have it bad?

The same tribulation befalls our brethren in the world, let me tell you --

Here's how The World makes people miserable -- we're talking about people who willfully shun the yoke of religion, supposedly to make their life easier and filled with more pleasure.

A young woman knows her power over men, and dresses to accentuate that power. She "puts out" before marriage, which of course snares any man who is a slave to his passions. He wants to possess this pleasure forever, which marriage seems to promise him, so he marries her.

Sure, there's a short honeymoon phase over the next few years, during which time they spend a lot of money together and "live it up". They go into debt for a nice house, try to keep up with the Joneses, etc.

But that's when the pleasure stops.  Like all good things, the honeymoon phase ends. They don't have children. She stops "putting out", or only does so on her terms. She begins controlling her hapless husband, who is a slave to his passions. He buys her lots of "stuff" to keep her happy and feeling romantic. He has to work more and more to earn enough money to afford the lifestyle she has become accustomed to.

While he's at work putting in 60 hour weeks, she's at home surfing the Net, watching soap operas, eating bon bons, and comparing notes with her girlfriends about whose diamond ring is the biggest, and who got the best gifts from their husbands. She is never satisfied, always wanting more, bigger, better.

So the wife & husband don't see each other much, and the flame of romance goes out in their marriage. She is at home, alone, much of the time. Eventually, an opportunity arises for the wife to commit adultery.

Then comes the divorce. The man, who didn't get much from this marriage except working his butt off and being subservient more often than not, now has to suffer the final insult -- paying at least 1/2 of his net worth to his now ex-wife.

And you wonder why young men don't run after marriage these days? To a person with common sense, marriage has all the markings of an out-and-out scam.

Indeed, many jaded young men are shunning marriage altogether these days, and finding ways to beat women at their own game.

If you think I'm making any of this up -- I'm not. It doesn't apply to everyone, of course, but the hypothetical scenario above is a collation of dozens of true stories I read.