I am not a married man. I’m the furthest you can be from that, actually. I’m not particularly happy about this, to be honest. I’d love to have it all figured out—to have someone to come home to and hang out with after a miserable day at work, someone I know I can build a future with, someone I may be able to start a family with.

But all my married dude friends hate on marriage like it’s the worst decision they have ever made. It seems like it’s one of their favorite things to talk about. I’m constantly hearing things like, “Stay single,” “Never get married,” and “God, do I wish I was single!”

Of course, they don’t genuinely mean it. So I asked a few guys why they keep referring to their beloved wives as "ball and chains." Here's what they had to say.

“I honestly have never really thought too much about it until now. And now that I do, I feel kind of odd about it. I love my wife, or else I wouldn’t have married her. I think I was just used to my dad and uncle and pretty much any other married guy I know saying things about how I should’ve stayed single because it was awesome. This will sound stupid, probably, but I think I do it just because I feel like it’s something I should be doing since everyone else is doing it. Now I feel like a gigantic prick because what kind of a f**ked up reason is that to do anything? It’s not like I’d jump off a bridge if all the other married guys were doing it.” —Paul H.

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“For me, it’s simple: I don’t want to feel like a p*ssy. Think about it: Any time me or any of the other married guys we hang out with talk about how awesome our wives are, the immediate reaction is for everyone to make fun of us for being whipped. It was like that even when I was just dating my wife. Think about how you would feel if every time you complained about being single or not getting laid very much, I started going in on you about your fear of commitment and lack of success in dating. Sometimes, it’s just easier for me to keep to myself how great my wife is, you know?” —Drew S.

“I don’t think I do this too often. At least, I hope that I don’t. I love my wife. I love my kids. I love them more than anything else in the world, really. If I’m ever complaining about being married, it’s probably because I’ve had a bad day, where I’m upset with something in my life or my wife and I have just had a fight. For me, it’s a way of venting without being too revealing or mean about it. I like to think I avoid actually talking sh*t about my wife by occasionally whining about some of the things that come with marriage that can sometimes seem negative or difficult to deal with.” —Spencer L.

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“Look: My wife is probably the best thing to have ever happened to me. I love her to death. I really do. There are a lot of times when I want to talk about how great it is to have found the woman of my dreams and to have somehow gotten her to agree to spend the rest of her life with me, but I don’t, especially to single guys. I think and hope that they'll find something like what I’ve found, but in the meantime, my telling them how great it is might make them feel bad, and I don’t want to do that. Nobody likes a braggart. So I complain about being married because I don't want single men to feel like I'm trying to act like I'm living a better life than them.” Ã¢â‚¬”Alexander W.

“When I get together with a bunch of the guys, as it were, we seem to spend a lot of time talking about (a) how great it is that we’re catching up, and (b) various things in our life that we want to complain about. You are always going to have something to complain about. When I was single, I complained a lot about work or about the difficulties of dating in New York because at the time those were two of the biggest things going on in my life. Now my marriage is the biggest thing, and even though it’s a great marriage, there are always still things that you want to complain about. Being able to do it to other guys is cathartic. But the things that go on between me and my wife aren’t things I usually want to get very specific about, so my way of complaining about them is to go high-level with it and just say that single life is easier, or sometimes more fun, etc.” —Chris F.

“The day I got married—and actually for a while before that, like when I decided to get married and my wife said yes—my entire life changed. You might go into it thinking things won’t, but that’s naïve. A lot of things change when you are not the most important person in your own life anymore. You have different priorities and responsibilities, and sometimes they weigh on you. Whenever I talk negatively about marriage, it’s probably because I’m nostalgic for some of the freedom that came with single life. It isn’t that I want to be single again, but it’s tough to not miss some of the things about being single, you know? It’s also something I can talk about with all of my friends because the ones who are no longer single can feel nostalgic with me, and the ones who are still single can tell us stories about their adventures in singledom.” —Erik S.

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“It’s a way of blowing off steam. If there’s something legitimately wrong with my marriage, my wife and I will obviously talk about it, but there are a lot of little things that come with being married and sharing your life with someone that irk you but that aren’t really a big deal. Not a big enough deal to get into it with my wife about anyway. However, I still want to vent about these things, just to get it out, so I’ll say something like, 'The wife doesn’t want me to go away camping this weekend since I was just out of town last weekend. God, guys, never get married!'” —Bryan M.