12 ms·
On Marrying the Wrong Person
- whitsend 11y agoI feel so sad reading this as I feel that my marriage is in the final stages and will end soon - regardless of what I want. I have a 6 and 3 yr old who I will do anything for but carrying on in marriage won't work and I don't have the final say if things are to end. Does anyone know some online groups or forums to talk through these issues? I'm not US-based but still would value the chance to talk to people in the same situation. thanks.
- SSQ 11y agoI am from a different school. I got married because I had to. The myriad questions of "incompatibility" were never given accommodation in both of our minds. Period. Moral: I am not so special so as not to be able to accommodate another person !
- norea-armozel 11y agoAt this rate, I'll likely never marry since I have a hard enough time knowing myself in general (not a joke, since I'm trans and dealing with my gender identity now at 35 it really sucks to meet people in social settings). Oh well, I can always just have a cat to feed and pet.
- cmollis 11y agoThat's a pretty insightful article. I wish I had that 20 years ago when I met my future ex-wife. Let's review my list: 1. we don't understand ourselves. (check.. plus). At least not then. 2. we don't understand other people. (check). I interpreted them as what I wanted them to be, not as they were. Note: all the little foibles and peccadilloes will add up. 3. we aren't used to being happy. (check). I was driven then and had been for so long. Suffering to me was success so being with an extremely difficult person was actually 'comfortable'.. or at least familiar. 4. being single is so awful. (no check). Being single was great then and now. (but it's harder with three kids..) Looking back, I was single living in NY..and have absolutely no idea why I got married... But this leads to.. 5. Instinct has too much Prestige. (CHECK CHECK). Love this line (and maybe I'm just too stupid to really know what it means), but I interpret it as 'I know what's right' (ostensibly). I really thought I knew what I was doing.. I was always such a know-it-all, did absolutely no homework on what really binds two people together and.. there you go.
- nicolas_t 11y agoPretty much the same for me... I met my soon to be ex-wife 10 years ago, I was young, didn't know and understand myself. I've known that things weren't really right for already 6 years but I've tried to somehow change myself and her to improve things. Important to impose a time limit on that and you don't change the quirks of another person. Now I know that I went into it too quickly, that our quirks do not match and that while I think she would be the perfect wife to someone else, she's not it for me.
- nugget 11y agoHow long were you married for and what was the final nail in the coffin? It seems like there's never been a better time to be single, especially if you're living in one of the major cities. I have a lot of friends who say the same thing you said, having ''no idea'' why they got married; and when they say it they look truly befuddled as if they just woke up one day and accidentally found themselves in such a state.
- cmollis 11y agoI was married 15 years total.. the final nail was probably in the 10th year, I would say. In truth, having 'no idea' is wrong.. it's just that I had the wrong idea;).
- kazinator 11y agoThere is "wrong person for you" and "wrong person for anyone". The latter, you must avoid at all costs.
- AznHisoka 11y agoWhat's the difference? If he/she is wrong for you, who cares if he/she isn't right for someone else? Very little consolation (if any) if he/she turns out to be the right person for someone else.
- Vraxx 11y agoIn fact, the first thought I had on the matter is it's actually a little depressing if he/she turned out to be the right person for someone else and yet the two mistaken people suffered together for some number of years that could have been bliss with someone else.
- kazinator 11y agoWhat's the difference? Hmm, perhaps a car analogy. "Wrong car for you" might be a two-seater sporty thing, and you have five kids. "Wrong car for anyone" has brakes that suddenly stop working.
- a3n 11y agoMy ex wife was a Volvo station wagon whose brakes stopped working.
- LordKano 11y agoYou can have a grown-up, amicable breakup with the wrong person for you. The wrong person for anyone will destroy your life.
- Cerium 11y agoMy grandparents met when they were both engaged to other people. The story goes that my grandfather came home that day and told his fiancee that: "I met another woman and while I do not know if she is the right one I have learned that you are the wrong one". He ended up marrying that woman he met that day and living happily together for more than sixty years. The fiancee found someone else and lived happily as well. I don't think it matters much if someone is the wrong person for anyone. They are just as dangerous as the wrong person for yourself. If you are allergic to cats or peanuts who cares that other people enjoy them?
- ececconi 11y agoThese are the two things that led to the dissolution of a six year relationship. - how can one raise children with them - how can one develop together
- CameraSupra 11y agoThere is so much wrong with the first section of the article, I could only put up with skimming the rest. The only thing I learned from the first section was not to marry the author.
- scribu 11y agoYour comment would be a lot more valuable if you replaced "There is so much wrong" with specifics.
- AJ007 11y ago"Sex is hard to come by as well. For all the new gadgets and supposed freedoms of modernity, it can be very hard to get laid – and expecting to do so regularly with new people is bound to end in disappointment after 30."
- splintercell 11y agoThe single most awful thing people do is treat love as an 'emotional' affair, something which is beyond reason. That when it happens, it happens, and when you're in a relationship, you must at all cost keep maintaining the sense of euphoria or else everything will be gone. This would be equivalent of starting a business with someone not on the basis of the value proposition of the business, but based on how you emotionally like the idea, and then hiding all the losses and constantly trying to achieve the initial profit you saw.
- k__ 11y agoAfter two failed relationships I started to treat love as a logical decision. I stopped calling the feeling I get when meeting a new person I get attracted to as love. You know, "having a crush" on someone, wearing the pink-sunglasses, butterflies in the belly, or whatever they call it. Love is still about feelings for me, but about other feelings than those. It's about being able to completely trust each other. About sharing experiences. About understanding. About learning and growing together. These are the things that make me continuously happy in a relationship for long time.
- Sven7 11y agoSounds like the American economy.
- santaclause33 11y agoThree notes I would add: 1) In response to the "know yourself" bullet: I met my now wife at 15 - we learned a lot about ourselves between then and when we married at age 22. But we were pretty much committed to marrying by age 18, even though we learned a lot after. You can learn with another person. 2) Life pro tip on understanding other people (this is a quick reinforcement of a bunch of points in the article): if someone is behaving irrationally, 99% of the time its because they are subconciously insecure about something. 3) The odds of first marriage are better than 50/50. That statistic is for total marriages, but people who divorce once on average divorce multiple times. Success rate of first marriage is something like 65%. Also, that success rate goes higher if you're high income, like most of HN.
- acheron 11y agoThe odds of first marriage are better than 50/50. That statistic is for total marriages, but people who divorce once on average divorce multiple times. Success rate of first marriage is something like 65%. Also, that success rate goes higher if you're high income, like most of HN. Yes, thanks, I was about to post the same thing. Also divorce rates are lower among college graduates (which is correlated with income of course).
- rdrey 11y agoI have no data to back this up, but I would guess that college / university graduates also get married later in life.
- thedufer 11y agoBased on the first Google result [1], average age of first marriage goes up by ~2.5 years for men and ~3.5 years for women with a bachelor's degree over just a high school diploma. 1 http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/article/marriage-and-divorce-patterns-by-gender-race-and-educational-attainment-5.htm http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/article/marriage-and-divorc...
- koder2016 11y ago
- grillvogel 11y agothis was a lot of rambling nonsense
- noselfrighteous 11y agoWhy even comment with such a lackluster critique?
- reddytowns 11y agothe truth is sometimes expressed better simply
- reddytowns 11y agoWHY
- reddytowns 11y agoALL
- reddytowns 11y agoTHE
- reddytowns 11y agoDOWNVOTES!?!?!
- reddytowns 11y agoHMM?????????
- zxcvvcxz 11y agoHere's an uncomfortable thought: an effective 1-to-1 mapping between men and women probably doesn't exist. The fact of the matter is that women are primarily interested in a top smaller percentage of high value men (this is called hypergamy). This smaller group of desirable men would most like to have multiple mates (this is called polygamy). Marriage, and the accompanying culture and customs, 'corrects' this by trying to create a 1-to-1 mapping. Both extreme strategies described are traditionally shamed and discouraged. Why? Because marriage (monogamous long-term bonding) is good for society. It incentivizes the largest amount of people to be productive, and reduces civil unrest by distributing sexual access to women across as many men as possible. For more on sex and society, check out J.D. Unwin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Unwin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Unwin Now, how this relates to the OP. The fact of the matter is that people become unhappy in a relationship of any kind when they think they are getting the short end of the stick, and could be doing better. They'll rationalize it six ways to Sunday, "my partner doesn't understand me", "my partner smothers me", "they don't do enough chores", "we don't understand ourselves", whatever, but at the end of the day they think they ought to have a better mate, and are fed up with their current one! This is especially true of women, who, by pure numerical inevitability, largely marry below what they would prefer. We know that women initiate most divorces too, at ~70% (fun fact: among college-eduated couples, that number rises to 90%). A smaller amount of men end up locked to one person too, when they know in another world they could have more mates. Such are the sacrifices for the monogamous society (often referred to as patriarchal, because women are more sexually restricted). So in conclusion, what bothers me about articles like this, who delve deep into rationalizations instead of simple mate value and attractiveness, is the implication of a 1-to-1 mapping between men and women. Is there a right person to marry, for most people? Probably not.
- epimetheus 11y ago>but at the end of the day they think they ought to have a better mate, and are fed up with their current one I don't know if this is true across the board. I don't feel that way entirely, more along the lines of "I'm stuck in this situation; kids, a marriage where I get no real benefit, I just want to be free and do what I want and not have to bow to their whims." I know several people, right now, that have been divorced for some time (5+ years, and in one case 10+ years) and don't even date or have interest in dating. Their motivations seem aligned more with mine than wanting a better mate - In fact, If I end up getting a divorce (we have agreed to try and work it out, again), I have no interest in dating again, at least not for a while. FWIW, I'm 38, and the people I'm referencing are older than me, some as much as 12+ years older, so maybe it's an age thing.
- tgb 11y agoI think there might be simpler explanation. Consider that starting and especially leaving a relationship has major time and emotional costs. So we're simply biased to commit to anyone we happen to be with. Similar to why we work the wrong job, for example.
- therealdrag0 11y agoThat certainly plays a role.
- logfromblammo 11y agoI searched the article and found only one mention of "money". My hypothesis is that libido mismatch and inability to reach consensus on household budgeting are the two strongest root causes for failed marriages.
- cmollis 11y agoThere was distinct libido mismatch which ultimately deteriorated into an effective 'weapon', if you will (if you do this, you won't get that, kind of thing). Money was never a problem. I suspect money is Often used as convenient excuse hiding something more sinister (or prosaic like in my case, we just never loved one another )
- LordKano 11y agoIt's easier to live with being broke if your sexual needs are being met. If you're broke and sexually unfulfilled, that's not going to last.
- epimetheus 11y agoOr even if you have money and are sexually unfulfilled. I'm pretty sure for myself, a libido mismatch was a contributing factor for some of our issues. We do fine, not in the 1%, but certainly in the 5-6% (household income ~140k in a not terrible cost of living area). Our times of interest were even wonky. I get tired at night and lose interest, that's when she wanted it. I liked it in the morning (after brushing the teeth), she likes to sleep in as much as possible (After a kid, that means until he/she wakes up). And she was quick to reach (sorry if this is TMI, lol), while I took a bit longer, and she was extra sensitive after and... uh, dried up so it became painful for her after she got hers. After awhile, sex become uninteresting if you are the one not getting fulfilled, and the marriage suffers. No amount of money fixes that.
- LordKano 11y agoI'm not willing to go into detail but my divorce was very much about sexual incompatibility.
- draw_down 11y agoI thought this was pretty fantastic. I would say it nailed much of the reason I ended up marrying the wrong person. However, denial was a HUGE part that doesn't come up here. Every time in the run-up to the wedding that I experienced something that made me want to call it off, I told myself it was just cold feet, that all guys think that stuff. Denial. But I suppose this is more or less covered by the part about not knowing oneself. Definitely learned a lot about myself since then. Two more things: 1) It's really not hard to get laid in your 30s. I outright disagree with that part. 2) For me at least, the divorce itself was nowhere near the emotional blow of realizing that I was married to someone who was wrong for me. Carrying that burden inside was soul-destroying. Talking in counseling about what wasn't working, and then ultimately getting divorced, was nowhere near as bad as that. But, I was only married for two years. It probably sucks a lot worse when you've bought a house and had babies and stuff.
- Erwin 11y agoThis site seems to be derived (or even created by as, it reminds me of his style) Alain de Botton's work -- author of many interesting modern philosophy books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_de_Botton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_de_Botton
- kough 11y agoYup, he helped found The School of Life, which is responsible for this website. Out of curiosity, did you read the content and not read anything about the source? The first thought I had when I saw the domain name was huh, who is telling me to live my life this way.
- exstudent2 11y agoWhile this post almost touched on the issue I believe the number one reason marriage is in trouble in the 21st century is due to media and societal glamorization of hedonism and selfishness. Not mentioned in the post is the value that can only come from having a single mate for life and working through problems together (lightly mentioned as "growing together"). This idea became abhorrent in the 20th century, driven in large part by advertising but also the culture of the baby boomers. Rock stars and groupies were glamorized. Men had immense media pressure on them to have multiple mates. Toward the end of the century women had the same pressure put on them with media like Sex and The City and Friends. The documentary Century Of Self covers a lot of the root manipulation that created this situation, but the end result is a feeling of failure and shame for people with low partner counts.
- basicplus2 11y agoits simple... men need sex, women need children.. its hard wired. and eventually these needs go out of alignment
- hoodoof 11y agoI did much of what this guy did: http://www.danoah.com/2012/10/16-ways-i-blew-my-marriage.html http://www.danoah.com/2012/10/16-ways-i-blew-my-marriage.htm...
- maxander 11y agoI've got one word for all you lovebirds- roommates. Best (reversible) way to know your domestic faults. Distrust any potential romantic partner that hasn't lived with other people extensively. And in their adult lives, since in college most people aren't ready to do that kind of self-development. And distrust yourself if you haven't done the same, of course.
- gyardley 11y agoFor men who had a bit of an awkward childhood (like, say, me, and perhaps some of you as well), perhaps the most important bit of advice about marriage is that your first serious relationship, should it happen to end, will not end up being the only one you ever have, and that "we've already been together for an appropriately long period of time" is not remotely a legitimate reason to get married. Should there not be a very, very strong match - due to lack of shared values, mismatched libido, poor communication skills, whatever - then the appropriate thing to do is break it off, not limp along in an adequate-but-far-from-ideal state until length of tenure or the pressure of societal obligations compel you to the altar.
- chm 11y agoI agree with your last paragraph except for one point. Libido can and does change, but it's (from my experience) not controllable. OTOH, you can work on your communication skills, or even convince someone that, e.g. spending more money on trips than on clothing is better (i.e. influence one's values). Not even great communication between partners will fix a libido mismatch, it's not something that can be rationalized.
- firemanx 11y agoMy wife had me buy her a poster this year which I have found to be particularly profound in a variety of life's situations. It says, simply "The grass is greener where you water it." We've since had it framed.
- oldsj 11y agoHave to say I really like the layout and color scheme of the site and I like the general "life advice" theme as well. What if we made a git-backed / wiki style site like this where anyone could contribute and the best "life advice" would rise to the top?
- dopamean 11y agoI'm sure there are a variety of subreddits you could combine into a multireddit that would serve this purpose. /r/diy, /r/lifeprotips, and /r/personalfinance all come to mind.
- philovivero 11y agoThis is a great article. There are some things it doesn't point out. 1) Marriage is a contract, but unlike most contracts, its terms and conditions can change at any time without the consent or knowledge of either party. That is to say, politicians decide the terms and conditions, and your marriage isn't grandfathered through with the laws in place at the time it was consummated. 2) As of today, the outcome of divorce (how assets are distributed) is overwhelmingly in favor of the female, assuming a mixed-gender marriage. This is one of the reasons for the large gap in divorce initiations: women profit far more, and thus more often end the marriage. There are a couple more conclusions you can draw about whether you should do more due diligence on the person you're about to marry. 1) If you're female, you can be far less concerned. If it turns out to be the wrong guy, just divorce him. If anything, you'll get assets and a livable wage for no effort for years. 2) If you're male, you should be far more concerned. You need to do 10-50x more work vetting your future partner than your parents and grandparents did. 3) The divorce laws in 5 years may be completely different than today. Be sure to plan for how the political climate will change in the future. I have been married more than once, so as you can imagine, I've had to put a lot of thought into this matter. The marriage that ended is responsible for reducing my wages, which should lead me to living comfortably in San Francisco, to being required to live with roommates. There is a large amount of danger involved in marriage, so make sure you understand the dangers before pulling the trigger. EDIT: The reduction in income also has prevented me from working at several really great startups and instead having to slave at more profitable companies like ad networks etc. These go against my moral compass, so for me, at least, divorce also led to me having to contribute to increasing evil in the world. This is a huge personal hit that is hard to understate.
- lakesta 11y agoSeems like the biggest thing of all is forgotten here - people change. Even if you marry the right person, they won't be that same person a year out and you won't be either so it doesn't really matter who you married or who you were when you married. Sure there are some people who are really really wrong for one another but outside of that, everyone is going to "marry the wrong person". If they're not the wrong person when you marry them, just wait longer. There's a book that covers this as well as a lot of other misnomers on marriage and how to work through them, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0054TVVPK http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0054TVVPK
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- gizi 11y ago> Back in the olden days, marriage was a rational business ... It still is for 80% of the world population. > We are still traumatised by this. I don't think that 80% of the world population would be traumatized. Arranged marriages work absolutely fine. It is rather the alternative that is in doubt.
- aaroninsf 11y agoAgreed... ITT there is a good amount of presumption that the natural and appropriate motivation for decisions is personal actualization and short horizon victory. E.g. contention that it's so good to be single today, why would you even consider getting married? The answer to those in a prolonged adolescence with such a view is: because there may be more to life than yourself. The first thing that changes when you _have kids_ is that you should no longer be your own top priority. Thank god neurobiology forces reorganization of imperatives as much as it does...! :)
- alexashka 11y agoThis was painful - I read the first point, skimmed the second and forwarded reading a sentence of each point further down the line. Anyone giving out bullet points about marriage needs to back it up with some credentials - who are you to be making these statements? This comes across a lot like self-help advice from someone needing some help. 'Learn by teaching' is a disaster in the making - you simply don't have the life experience to teach anyone anything but what a thousand thoughts going in a thousand different directions look like. The heavy-intellectualizing of this post and the pomposity of 'book of life' - please take a look in the mirror and humble yourself, whoever the author may be :)
- sjg007 11y agoUmm shared experiences mainly.