18 ms·

To Stay Married, Embrace Change

205 points by DiabloD3 10y ago

cylinder 10y ago
I'm having trouble expressing this sentiment, but I feel the NYT has taken on a patriarchal tone these days. I browse their mobile site every morning, and I see very little news, with a lot of "do this" info-pop stuff, i.e., "To be happy and live long, exercise," "to be a good person, do X." Usually they cite a study somewhere with little scrutiny, and then write condescendingly. It's kind of disturbing on some level, and the amount they do it is inappropriate for the NYT imo. But I guess this is what readers want these days. With people moving on from religion they are looking for someone else to preach a code to them. Maybe it's just the headlines that bother me. "to stay married, embrace change." This is someone's advice, not a law of physics. A headline with more integrity would be "Embracing change may help a marriage endure."
- glangdale 10y ago
  "For Quality Journalism, Embrace the Print Version" Jokes aside, my experience is that if you are looking for an increasingly clickbait-y, informal and low-end version of Hallowed Publication X, with lots of self-help and thinly-disguised celebrity gossip, then the ordering is "Print Version of X" << "Web Version of X" << "Mobile Version of X". Usually all the content is there in all 3 versions, but it seems to make a huge difference in terms of what's buried and what leads.
  - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
    New Scientist did something like this when it started to emphasise the mobile version: more pop psych, less hard science. Then I stopped reading it. It's interesting to find archive copies of New Scientist and Sci Am from the 70s and 80s to see just how far the tone and content have drifted. Maybe I'm unduly pessimistic, but I'm finding it hard to imagine something like Martin Gardner's math and puzzle columns appearing regularly in a mainstream online journal today.
    - ktRolster 10y ago
      If your website doesn't have large pictures of people having a good time, you're behind the times, and you won't have a general readership.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    - Baeocystin 10y ago
      Science News (https://www.sciencenews.org/ https://www.sciencenews.org/) is still around and kicking. It's the last magazine I still subscribe to.
    - AlexCoventry 10y ago
      New Scientist has been uncritical gee-whiz garbage since at least the 90s. It might have been before that, but I lacked the analytical skills to notice.
      - tome 10y ago
        Yes, even at school aged 14 I was told that if I wanted to really learn about science I should read Scientific American in preference to New Scientist.
  - fuckemem 10y ago
    << "Outbrain content"
  - cylinder 10y ago
    Nyt just ran a piece about getting ketchup out of the bottle on page A2 of the print edition: How to Get Ketchup From a Bottle Without the Wait, Watery Goo and Splatter https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/13/us/ketchup-bottle-pour.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/13/us/ketchup-bottle-pour.ht...
- zzalpha 10y ago
  This is in the Style section. It's part of their "Modern Love" column. This type of soft journalism had always been part of newspapers. If you don't like it, don't read those sections. I have a subscription to the NYT and their news in my RSS feed and this is a fraction of the content they publish.
- ellius 10y ago
  It's been happening more in Bloomberg and the Financial Times too (although, in the case of the latter, I think it's partially attributable to the fact they were bought). It's almost more annoying when the tripe is mixed in with really good work vs. having entire periodicals dedicated to that garbage. At least in that case it's easier to filter.
- ice109 10y ago
  >patriarchal what does this have to do with patriarchy?
  - dahveed311 10y ago
    I took his meaning to be that they are acting as a ruling father (i.e. or parent), just declaring what one _needs_ to do, rather than express the fact this is an opinion and not based on any news or science.
  - jcfrei 10y ago
    They probably meant patronizing
  - jackvalentine 10y ago
    It's a common enough phrase to describe a certain kind of moralizing and instructive manner of speaking. Derived from times gone by where it was a given that the head of the family was male and would instruct others and be deferred to.
  - abrowne 10y ago
    I think they meant paternalistic https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/paternalistic https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/paternalistic
  - droopyEyelids 10y ago
    Pretty sure the commentor is just switching words. There is some word that kind of means to give unwanted advice, or to always be assuming you know and can teach people stuff. It's not pedagogical, not patriarchial, but something close. Im not even sure it starts with a "P". Not kibbitzer.
    - droopyEyelids 10y ago
      I think "paternalistic" was the word that fit here.
- RichardHeart 10y ago
  Is the giving of advice patriarchal? Do not mothers give advice quite often. The author of this advice is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Calhoun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Calhoun Your suggestion regarding the headline improvement is entirely accurate.
carsongross 10y ago
The author is recommending, in a round about way, a way of dealing with a sex-asymmetric phenomena that was perfectly expressed in this image, from another NY Times article on marriage[1]: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/29botton/29botton-master768.jpg https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/29... It is amusing that, in both articles, the illustration tells more truth about the situation than all the words following it. [1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/why-you-will-marry-the-wrong-person.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/why-you-wi...
- zzalpha 10y ago
  Why are we to believe this is sex-assymetric? I'd be amazed if there weren't as many married men who were resentful because their wives have changed, whether that means becoming less thin, focused on career, children, less interested in sex, etc.
  - carsongross 10y ago
    Women file for divorce twice as often as men: http://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/savvy/documents/press/pdfs/AM_2015_Rosenfeld_News_Release_FINAL.pdf http://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/savvy/documents/pr... It is not popular to discuss sex differences in marriage behaviors (as my burnt karma indicates) but they exist.
    - zzalpha 10y ago
      Literally right from the paper: Women are more likely than men to initiate divorces, but women and men are just as likely to end non-marital relationships, according to a new study that will be presented at the 110th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA). And later: Social scientists have previously argued that women initiate most divorces because they are more sensitive to relationship difficulties. Rosenfeld argues that were this true, women would initiate the breakup of both marriages and non-marital relationships at equal rate The paper goes on to theorize that the assymetry may be because the institution of marriage (and the social expectations surrounding it) has not caught up with expectations of gender equality, leading women to feel oppressed. And that has absolutely nothing to do with what this article is about, and certainly does not support the claimed sex-assymetry of marital dissatisfaction due to spousal changes that you claim (without evidence) exists.
zdean 10y ago
I wonder if by the time we find "The Ultimate Secret to Staying Married" we'll have already learned that marriage doesn't have to be the final goal of a relationship after all.
lawrencewu 10y ago
Easy to say, hard to do. We don't like change. Change means possible danger, it means relinquishing opportunities, it means no safety net. Part of the happiness that comes from a new relationship comes from not just discovering new things about each other (or NRE, or the Coolidge effect) but from the (misplaced) belief that things will go on this way forever. Embracing change means sacrificing that pleasure, which you might be able to do if you possess foresight/discipline, but it is hard and not obvious, especially when you have an of love that's foolish, us-against-the-world that reinforces that mentality.
- GotAnyMegadeth 10y ago
  NRE - New Relationship Energy (?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_relationship_energy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_relationship_energy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coolidge_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coolidge_effect
  - lawrencewu 10y ago
    Yup!
Gustomaximus 10y ago
I read about a British maths expert that wrote some formula that would accurately predict if couples would stay together. His key variable was working out if people have a willingness to compromise.
- ArtDev 10y ago
  That is oversimplified. John Gottman has been doing research on this topic for decades: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gottman https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gottman He has 7 predictors. I highly recommend his book: "The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work".
- kleer001 10y ago
  I thought the defining characteristic was buying bids (more than 2/3 of the time, or so). You know, someone makes a comment or suggestion and the other person accepts it (not necessarily agreeing with). In awful relationships that simple transaction is short circuited by passive aggression or the similar negative behaviour.
- abalashov 10y ago
  I've been through two failed marriages and my conclusion has been that this fixation with "compromise" is woefully misguided and constitutes an antipattern, although, for all I know, that's why I've been through two failed marriages. :-) Still, on a theoretical level, the religion that's been made of compromise in therapeutic settings is a pet peeve of mine. The first problem is that compromise is viewed by most laypeople as "splitting the difference" or "meeting in the middle". That may work for a lot of property and financial disputes, and maybe even business disputes in general, but it doesn't always work in life and relationships, though I don't deny that many things can indeed be compromised. But sometimes an equitable settlement is one where I get 90% and you get 10%, commensurate with the hand the parties are playing and the amount of leverage they have. Although most businesspeople experienced in negotiation know this instinctively, they don't seem to teach it in how-to-be-a-better-spouse school. Besides that: 1) Compromise encourages parties to take extreme and unreasonable positions with the expectation of being "bargained down" to more or less what they really want. This contributes to "position inflation". 2) It may be that, as a practical matter, compromise is the worst possible option, far worse than either of the starting positions. This happens a lot in relationships. Most damningly, in my view: 3) The pressure to move toward the middle creates an artificially level playing field where it may not exist. It does not weigh whether one side's position is a lot more reasonable, fair and thoughtful than the other. Aside from the unfair aspect of this ipso facto, it also encourages position inflation. Some disputes lend themselves to splitting down the middle. Others have nonlinear/discontinuous qualities where "some" is not better than "none". TL;DR sometimes one party's position sucks a lot more than the other's, and the aim to compromise only furthers the negative consequences of this iniquity.
unit91 10y ago
"Embrace change" may be a great idea, but I don't think it gets to the heart of the issue. I think the key to staying married is having two people who are committed to staying married. From that, other things follow: embracing change, learning to be a better spouse, etc. I've only been married for 12 years, but I can absolutely say that my wife and I have always been very happy and willing to be accommodating, precisely because we're committed to lifelong marriage for religious reasons. I've met a lot of people who think that sounds like a prison sentence, but for me it's been bliss.
- cicero 10y ago
  I agree with you, and my wife and I will have been married 27 years in June. I will add that not only is part of my motivation for staying married religious (I'm Catholic), but I also depend on God's help to keep us together. Marriage can be hard, but it's absolutely worth it. Learning to love the same person for a lifetime makes one a better person.
  - philliphaydon 10y ago
    I'm sorry if this offends you and the person you replied to, but why are you committed to staying married for religious reasons? Why are you not committed to staying married because you love your partner unconditionally and because they are your best friend that you love to spend time with? It seems totally bizarre to me (being Atheist) to marry, and stay married, for religious reasons, or to believe that yourself is so special above all other people that God would help you. I can understand people having faith in a higher power(s) and following traditions and beliefs, etc. But the bit that baffles me about these two comments is that your marriage sounds like it almost now only exists for religious reasons and you no longer love your partner for what ever reason that made you want to get married to begin with.
    - mduerksen 10y ago
      Instead of "stay married, for religious reasons" I'd say "stay married, with religion as an anchor" (not sure if OPs agree, but I'd suspect they might). Religion is not the primary reason, but added security. > love your partner unconditionally There is no such thing. That's an ideal, not something you can build a marriage on. > best friend that you love to spend time with Is every day like that? Marriage has good and bad days. Religion can help to carry on through the bad days, by 1. restricting the quick exit paths 2. giving tools to resolve the issues, e.g. forgiveness
obstinate 10y ago
Personally, I don't think it's a terrible thing that marriages end. If we all lived to be a thousand years, but our psychology and perception of time remained otherwise unchanged, I doubt many would make it the whole way from 30 to 999 with the same partner. I daresay that it would be rather unusual for anyone to do. That said, for those who wish to see their marriages last, compromise and change tolerance seem quite necessary.
- mathgeek 10y ago
  > Personally, I don't think it's a terrible thing that marriages end. What do you feel that marriages should represent, then? It seems, to me, like one should not promise to remain forever if the design is not to follow through. Beyond the legal requirements of marriage, what else do you think should be implied?
  - alexpetralia 10y ago
    Marriage is probably more due to socialization - from religious marriages to shotgun weddings - than a deep desire to stay committed for the rest of one's life. Is it more likely that people are conforming to social norms, or that they have all found "the one?"
    - ozim 10y ago
      This quite shallow rationalisation. If you live in big city and have more prospects on finding someone else, if your life is all rosy and beautiful you might not have big desire to stay committed to rest of your life or more than couple months. All this ends when you or someone close to you gets sick, you lose your job or money. When you have to support your parents or siblings your dating pool shrinks quite a lot because you do not have time/money to spend on new dates. Your health is not going to be perfect all the time, you might get hit by a bus any time. It is more of insurance policy which you give and receive at the same time. So again if you live in big city and break your back or whatever, it is far easier to get any help. Think of all those living in some far from anywhere places. People who have to stick together to afford house. Those things create "social norms" and not the other way around. You might be angry at aunts pushing social norms on people without thinking, but they did not invented those norms.
intrasight 10y ago
To stay ANYTHING, embrace change.
theprop 10y ago
"Each goes from rock climber to couch potato, from rebel to middle manager, and from sex crazed to sleep obsessed." Please married folk please tell me this ain't the case...
- quickConclusion 10y ago
  Married or not, it is often the case...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- RikNieu 10y ago
  They also get old and develop chronic medical conditions. Some even become parents after having kids...
- zzalpha 10y ago
  Please married folk please tell me this ain't the case... What, change? Of course change happens. I'm almost 40 and have been married for 13 years (and we've been together for almost 20). In the last ten years I've learned to: ski, dive, rock climb, and backcountry hike. And while this stuff isn't my wife's thing, she's always supported me 100%. So yes, change is inevitable. How you change is up to you.
- framebit 10y ago
  I think that's all true, but keep it can also be the opposite. From couch potato to rock climber, etc.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  Yes, it's really the case. Not for everyone; see the guy who replied bragging about all the physical stuff he's learned to do. However, the odds of both partners in a marriage not turning into fat couch potatoes is very small. (This happened to me: I was married, I'm like that other 40yo guy and do lots of physical stuff, my ex got fat, we got divorced.) Be very, very, very careful who you marry, and if you're not planning on having kids, think very hard about whether you need to even bother getting married at all. It's usually not a good deal, and instead will cost you more with the IRS if you're both working and have similar incomes. IMO, the entire institution is obsolete and should be abolished.
RichardHeart 10y ago
One should not set a tactic as a goal. Marriage is buy a way to amplify enjoyment in life. Some marriages are wonderful, some are deadly. To be clear in ones objectives is to hit the mark much easier. Many the married person would be better off finding a new person to enjoy marriage with, than fight desperately to not be in something new. Thus it's not the staying in a situation that's important, that's but a means to an end. That being said, flexibility is nice, and if you have more paths to happiness and less paths to sorrow, you are likely to be happier. Don't sweat the small stuff, and it's all small stuff the saying goes.
abalashov 10y ago
What I learned from two failed marriages is that above all else, you have to pick spouses with whom you can even have the luxury of doing these things. That requires finding someone of vaguely comparable social background and education level. For a lot of people, this sort of assortative mating happens naturally because they draw on relatively healthy dating pools within their community—college classmates, colleagues, church, etc. Others, however, fall through the cracks. I feel that I did because I dropped out of university at age 20 and left the world of W-2 employment at age 22. What peer group? Solipsistic professional existence in a largely solipsistic and male-dominated profession. That's a very isolating existence and full of wrong turns unless you make strong, proactive efforts to stay in healthy social circles, which the average mid-20s person isn't going to be scrupulously careful about doing. It's very easy to start pulling dating partners from /dev/urandom, particularly amidst the loneliness and angst that eventually catches up to you. This way lies madness, especially if you try to parlay that into marriage. The American national mythology teaches us to look at people in highly individualised, democratic don't-judge-me ways, and leaves us blind to the fact that not all people are destined to fruitfully communicate or relate. In more traditional cultures, where social class boundaries are more explicit, this messaging is explicitly woven into people's upbringing. For better or worse, and despite the undeniable drawbacks of "traditional" social strictures, there's a certain timeless wisdom in that. Americans, however, commonly believe that any two people can build a bridge of understanding. In reality, that requires a vaguely comparable level of cultural development and intellectual sophistication. Otherwise, you're going to have to defend every one of the values you hold dear, and you're going to feel like you're having to explain them in crayon for three hours every time you do. And you're still going to fail because you're just not going to see eye-to-eye. So, from where I sit, this "embrace change" idea is rather high on the — if you will — marital Maslow's Hierarchy. As a first step, make sure you've got basic interpersonal communication and some rudimentary compatibility sorted. For people who have been fortunate or made relatively conventional choices, this may seem an odd preoccupation, but if you've been in a union where that's lacking, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.
- lohengramm 10y ago
  > Solipsistic professional existence in a largely solipsistic and male-dominated profession. That's a very isolating existence and full of wrong turns unless you make strong, proactive efforts to stay in healthy social circles, which the average mid-20s person isn't going to be scrupulously careful about doing. It's very easy to start pulling dating partners from /dev/urandom, particularly amidst the loneliness and angst that eventually catches up to you. That's exactly how I messed up my own life.
gregfjohnson 10y ago
Best advice I ever heard on getting ahead in life: Choose your parents wisely. My advice on marriage is similar: Be stupidly lucky in choosing a life partner. It worked for me! Last summer we celebrated our 35th anniversary. Looking forward to the next 35. (You laugh! My uncle and aunt celebrated their 70th.) Less flippantly: My parents divorced when I was 5 and my brother was 3. This was the defining trauma for much of my young life. I vowed never to do that, never to inflict that on children I might eventually have. When I married, it was simply, absolutely for good. I would die rather than violate that oath. My family urged me to do the standard thing they all did, of setting up a pre-nuptial agreement and having the prospective spouse sign it. I never considered that for a minute. I was not going to place that sort of fault line in our understanding of our marriage at the beginning. We are active Catholics (she from birth, me as an adult convert). We laugh a lot, and enjoy each others' jokes, off-hand witticisms, and spontaneous turns of phrase. I think it is fair to say that we each find the other to be extremely interesting intellectually. We tell each other we love each other frequently. We leave the kids behind and go on a cruise together once per year. My wife rather unsentimentally states that love is not a feeling, it is a decision. I think it is worth it to consciously reflect on what will communicate love to your partner in ways that they understand and find meaningful. Then, do it. The doing can be more important than whatever transitory feelings might or might lie behind it. Relatively early in our marriage, I made a career choice that was an unambiguous case of putting my career ahead of my marriage and family. The consequences of that choice resonated for years in our marriage. That was the biggest mistake I ever made, and I am grateful that our family managed to survive it. I will never do something that selfish, thoughtless, and stupid again. Things can get difficult, ugly, and painful for a time. Expanding on the point above about dying rather than walking away: That probably relates metaphorically to the NYTimes article shared by the OP. In my experience, as you and your partner grow and change over a lifetime, you have to let go of, and in effect die to the relationship you had. Over and over. There is a cycle of death, relinquishment, and renewal that is inevitable in a lifelong relationship. Would you really want to spend time as a 60-year-old with a person whose best years were their high school years, and who doggedly clings to that identity for the rest of their adult life? Of course not. You become co-authors of an amazing, surprising, unfolding story. Your and your partner's identity co-evolve. To support and encourage another person's growth inevitably involves letting go of who they used to be. (BTW, please do not take anything I said above as condoning abusiveness in a relationship. There are of course horrible and untenable relationships that simply must be ended.)
pfarnsworth 10y ago
Marriage at year 1 is nothing like marriage at year 5 is nothing like marriage at year 15 is nothing like year 20, ad infinitum. If you don't embrace the person your spouse is at this very moment, nothing will help you stay together. After having kids, our lives are very different, and we have become different people. I need to love my wife for who she is now, not yearn for who she was 8 years ago, and vice versa.
dnprock 10y ago
If this is true, then software engineers would stay married longer. And there are supporting stats. http://www.electronicproducts.com/Education/Career/Do_engineers_make_excellent_spouses_Divorce_rates_by_engineering_specialty.aspx?id=3162 http://www.electronicproducts.com/Education/Career/Do_engine... It's interesting to note that the previous study didn't look at ability to cope with change.
- ajuc 10y ago
  > If this is true, then software engineers would stay married longer Why? Are software engineers more adaptable?
  - geodel 10y ago
    Perhaps dealing with changing requirements.
ponderatul 10y ago
One very important concept to learn about - hypergamy. I recommend any straight male having problems with inter-sex relationships, marriage to give the redpill perspective a chance.
- fwn 10y ago
  Not sure what you are talking about. Hypergamy is about a difference in social status between the partners. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergamy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergamy Since you were talking about a "redpill perspective" you may have wanted to find a term that describes the idea of having intercourse with a larger amount of others. Maybe you searched for "promiscuity"? If the latter is the case I'm not certain how it relates to the article. The article elaborates on common problems in monogamous relationships.
dorothy0202 10y ago
When she/he is pointing out every tiny imperfection in the relationship, she/he might be looking for grounds to break up to be with someone else, It could be because she/he doesn't want romantic messages from another to get discovered. Any sort of sneaky behavior like this is a sign, It is not so typical of me to refer professionals online but I feel like I owe a lot to my hackdemon4@gmail.com who helped me track my cheating husband when he was having an affair, I got to find out that he has been lying to me for the past 5 months and seeing two other women. I was able to get direct access to his text messages, phone conversations and all social networks on his phone remotely : what was most amazing was that his recently deleted messages were retrieved by him. If you are getting less than you deserve in your relationship and want to be sure , there is no crime in that contact hackdemon4@gmail.com. tell him angie refereed you.
dorothy0202 10y ago
When she/he is pointing out every tiny imperfection in the relationship, she/he might be looking for grounds to break up to be with someone else, It could be because she/he doesn't want romantic messages from another to get discovered. Any sort of sneaky behavior like this is a sign, It is not so typical of me to refer professionals online but I feel like I owe a lot to my hackdemon4@gmail.com who helped me track my cheating husband when he was having an affair, I got to find out that he has been lying to me for the past 5 months and seeing two other women. I was able to get direct access to his text messages, phone conversations and all social networks on his phone remotely : what was most amazing was that his recently deleted messages were retrieved by him. If you are getting less than you deserve in your relationship and want to be sure , there is no crime in that contact hackdemon4@gmail.com. tell him angie refereed you.

205 points by DiabloD3 10y ago

I'm having trouble expressing this sentiment, but I feel the NYT has taken on a patriarchal tone these days. I browse their mobile site every morning, and I see very little news, with a lot of "do this" info-pop stuff, i.e., "To be happy and live long, exercise," "to be a good person, do X." Usually they cite a study somewhere with little scrutiny, and then write condescendingly. It's kind of disturbing on some level, and the amount they do it is inappropriate for the NYT imo. But I guess this is what readers want these days. With people moving on from religion they are looking for someone else to preach a code to them. Maybe it's just the headlines that bother me. "to stay married, embrace change." This is someone's advice, not a law of physics. A headline with more integrity would be "Embracing change may help a marriage endure."

glangdale 10y ago
"For Quality Journalism, Embrace the Print Version" Jokes aside, my experience is that if you are looking for an increasingly clickbait-y, informal and low-end version of Hallowed Publication X, with lots of self-help and thinly-disguised celebrity gossip, then the ordering is "Print Version of X" << "Web Version of X" << "Mobile Version of X". Usually all the content is there in all 3 versions, but it seems to make a huge difference in terms of what's buried and what leads.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  New Scientist did something like this when it started to emphasise the mobile version: more pop psych, less hard science. Then I stopped reading it. It's interesting to find archive copies of New Scientist and Sci Am from the 70s and 80s to see just how far the tone and content have drifted. Maybe I'm unduly pessimistic, but I'm finding it hard to imagine something like Martin Gardner's math and puzzle columns appearing regularly in a mainstream online journal today.
  - ktRolster 10y ago
    If your website doesn't have large pictures of people having a good time, you're behind the times, and you won't have a general readership.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - Baeocystin 10y ago
    Science News (https://www.sciencenews.org/ https://www.sciencenews.org/) is still around and kicking. It's the last magazine I still subscribe to.
  - AlexCoventry 10y ago
    New Scientist has been uncritical gee-whiz garbage since at least the 90s. It might have been before that, but I lacked the analytical skills to notice.
    - tome 10y ago
      Yes, even at school aged 14 I was told that if I wanted to really learn about science I should read Scientific American in preference to New Scientist.
- fuckemem 10y ago
  << "Outbrain content"
- cylinder 10y ago
  Nyt just ran a piece about getting ketchup out of the bottle on page A2 of the print edition: How to Get Ketchup From a Bottle Without the Wait, Watery Goo and Splatter https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/13/us/ketchup-bottle-pour.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/13/us/ketchup-bottle-pour.ht...
zzalpha 10y ago
This is in the Style section. It's part of their "Modern Love" column. This type of soft journalism had always been part of newspapers. If you don't like it, don't read those sections. I have a subscription to the NYT and their news in my RSS feed and this is a fraction of the content they publish.
ellius 10y ago
It's been happening more in Bloomberg and the Financial Times too (although, in the case of the latter, I think it's partially attributable to the fact they were bought). It's almost more annoying when the tripe is mixed in with really good work vs. having entire periodicals dedicated to that garbage. At least in that case it's easier to filter.
ice109 10y ago
>patriarchal what does this have to do with patriarchy?
- dahveed311 10y ago
  I took his meaning to be that they are acting as a ruling father (i.e. or parent), just declaring what one _needs_ to do, rather than express the fact this is an opinion and not based on any news or science.
- jcfrei 10y ago
  They probably meant patronizing
- jackvalentine 10y ago
  It's a common enough phrase to describe a certain kind of moralizing and instructive manner of speaking. Derived from times gone by where it was a given that the head of the family was male and would instruct others and be deferred to.
- abrowne 10y ago
  I think they meant paternalistic https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/paternalistic https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/paternalistic
- droopyEyelids 10y ago
  Pretty sure the commentor is just switching words. There is some word that kind of means to give unwanted advice, or to always be assuming you know and can teach people stuff. It's not pedagogical, not patriarchial, but something close. Im not even sure it starts with a "P". Not kibbitzer.
  - droopyEyelids 10y ago
    I think "paternalistic" was the word that fit here.
RichardHeart 10y ago
Is the giving of advice patriarchal? Do not mothers give advice quite often. The author of this advice is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Calhoun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Calhoun Your suggestion regarding the headline improvement is entirely accurate.

carsongross 10y ago

The author is recommending, in a round about way, a way of dealing with a sex-asymmetric phenomena that was perfectly expressed in this image, from another NY Times article on marriage[1]: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/29botton/29botton-master768.jpg https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/29... It is amusing that, in both articles, the illustration tells more truth about the situation than all the words following it. [1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/why-you-will-marry-the-wrong-person.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/why-you-wi...

zzalpha 10y ago
Why are we to believe this is sex-assymetric? I'd be amazed if there weren't as many married men who were resentful because their wives have changed, whether that means becoming less thin, focused on career, children, less interested in sex, etc.
- carsongross 10y ago
  Women file for divorce twice as often as men: http://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/savvy/documents/press/pdfs/AM_2015_Rosenfeld_News_Release_FINAL.pdf http://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/savvy/documents/pr... It is not popular to discuss sex differences in marriage behaviors (as my burnt karma indicates) but they exist.
  - zzalpha 10y ago
    Literally right from the paper: Women are more likely than men to initiate divorces, but women and men are just as likely to end non-marital relationships, according to a new study that will be presented at the 110th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA). And later: Social scientists have previously argued that women initiate most divorces because they are more sensitive to relationship difficulties. Rosenfeld argues that were this true, women would initiate the breakup of both marriages and non-marital relationships at equal rate The paper goes on to theorize that the assymetry may be because the institution of marriage (and the social expectations surrounding it) has not caught up with expectations of gender equality, leading women to feel oppressed. And that has absolutely nothing to do with what this article is about, and certainly does not support the claimed sex-assymetry of marital dissatisfaction due to spousal changes that you claim (without evidence) exists.

zdean 10y ago

I wonder if by the time we find "The Ultimate Secret to Staying Married" we'll have already learned that marriage doesn't have to be the final goal of a relationship after all.

lawrencewu 10y ago

Easy to say, hard to do. We don't like change. Change means possible danger, it means relinquishing opportunities, it means no safety net. Part of the happiness that comes from a new relationship comes from not just discovering new things about each other (or NRE, or the Coolidge effect) but from the (misplaced) belief that things will go on this way forever. Embracing change means sacrificing that pleasure, which you might be able to do if you possess foresight/discipline, but it is hard and not obvious, especially when you have an of love that's foolish, us-against-the-world that reinforces that mentality.

GotAnyMegadeth 10y ago
NRE - New Relationship Energy (?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_relationship_energy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_relationship_energy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coolidge_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coolidge_effect
- lawrencewu 10y ago
  Yup!

Gustomaximus 10y ago

I read about a British maths expert that wrote some formula that would accurately predict if couples would stay together. His key variable was working out if people have a willingness to compromise.

ArtDev 10y ago
That is oversimplified. John Gottman has been doing research on this topic for decades: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gottman https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gottman He has 7 predictors. I highly recommend his book: "The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work".
kleer001 10y ago
I thought the defining characteristic was buying bids (more than 2/3 of the time, or so). You know, someone makes a comment or suggestion and the other person accepts it (not necessarily agreeing with). In awful relationships that simple transaction is short circuited by passive aggression or the similar negative behaviour.
abalashov 10y ago
I've been through two failed marriages and my conclusion has been that this fixation with "compromise" is woefully misguided and constitutes an antipattern, although, for all I know, that's why I've been through two failed marriages. :-) Still, on a theoretical level, the religion that's been made of compromise in therapeutic settings is a pet peeve of mine. The first problem is that compromise is viewed by most laypeople as "splitting the difference" or "meeting in the middle". That may work for a lot of property and financial disputes, and maybe even business disputes in general, but it doesn't always work in life and relationships, though I don't deny that many things can indeed be compromised. But sometimes an equitable settlement is one where I get 90% and you get 10%, commensurate with the hand the parties are playing and the amount of leverage they have. Although most businesspeople experienced in negotiation know this instinctively, they don't seem to teach it in how-to-be-a-better-spouse school. Besides that: 1) Compromise encourages parties to take extreme and unreasonable positions with the expectation of being "bargained down" to more or less what they really want. This contributes to "position inflation". 2) It may be that, as a practical matter, compromise is the worst possible option, far worse than either of the starting positions. This happens a lot in relationships. Most damningly, in my view: 3) The pressure to move toward the middle creates an artificially level playing field where it may not exist. It does not weigh whether one side's position is a lot more reasonable, fair and thoughtful than the other. Aside from the unfair aspect of this ipso facto, it also encourages position inflation. Some disputes lend themselves to splitting down the middle. Others have nonlinear/discontinuous qualities where "some" is not better than "none". TL;DR sometimes one party's position sucks a lot more than the other's, and the aim to compromise only furthers the negative consequences of this iniquity.

unit91 10y ago

"Embrace change" may be a great idea, but I don't think it gets to the heart of the issue. I think the key to staying married is having two people who are committed to staying married. From that, other things follow: embracing change, learning to be a better spouse, etc. I've only been married for 12 years, but I can absolutely say that my wife and I have always been very happy and willing to be accommodating, precisely because we're committed to lifelong marriage for religious reasons. I've met a lot of people who think that sounds like a prison sentence, but for me it's been bliss.

cicero 10y ago
I agree with you, and my wife and I will have been married 27 years in June. I will add that not only is part of my motivation for staying married religious (I'm Catholic), but I also depend on God's help to keep us together. Marriage can be hard, but it's absolutely worth it. Learning to love the same person for a lifetime makes one a better person.
- philliphaydon 10y ago
  I'm sorry if this offends you and the person you replied to, but why are you committed to staying married for religious reasons? Why are you not committed to staying married because you love your partner unconditionally and because they are your best friend that you love to spend time with? It seems totally bizarre to me (being Atheist) to marry, and stay married, for religious reasons, or to believe that yourself is so special above all other people that God would help you. I can understand people having faith in a higher power(s) and following traditions and beliefs, etc. But the bit that baffles me about these two comments is that your marriage sounds like it almost now only exists for religious reasons and you no longer love your partner for what ever reason that made you want to get married to begin with.
  - mduerksen 10y ago
    Instead of "stay married, for religious reasons" I'd say "stay married, with religion as an anchor" (not sure if OPs agree, but I'd suspect they might). Religion is not the primary reason, but added security. > love your partner unconditionally There is no such thing. That's an ideal, not something you can build a marriage on. > best friend that you love to spend time with Is every day like that? Marriage has good and bad days. Religion can help to carry on through the bad days, by 1. restricting the quick exit paths 2. giving tools to resolve the issues, e.g. forgiveness

obstinate 10y ago

Personally, I don't think it's a terrible thing that marriages end. If we all lived to be a thousand years, but our psychology and perception of time remained otherwise unchanged, I doubt many would make it the whole way from 30 to 999 with the same partner. I daresay that it would be rather unusual for anyone to do. That said, for those who wish to see their marriages last, compromise and change tolerance seem quite necessary.

mathgeek 10y ago
> Personally, I don't think it's a terrible thing that marriages end. What do you feel that marriages should represent, then? It seems, to me, like one should not promise to remain forever if the design is not to follow through. Beyond the legal requirements of marriage, what else do you think should be implied?
- alexpetralia 10y ago
  Marriage is probably more due to socialization - from religious marriages to shotgun weddings - than a deep desire to stay committed for the rest of one's life. Is it more likely that people are conforming to social norms, or that they have all found "the one?"
  - ozim 10y ago
    This quite shallow rationalisation. If you live in big city and have more prospects on finding someone else, if your life is all rosy and beautiful you might not have big desire to stay committed to rest of your life or more than couple months. All this ends when you or someone close to you gets sick, you lose your job or money. When you have to support your parents or siblings your dating pool shrinks quite a lot because you do not have time/money to spend on new dates. Your health is not going to be perfect all the time, you might get hit by a bus any time. It is more of insurance policy which you give and receive at the same time. So again if you live in big city and break your back or whatever, it is far easier to get any help. Think of all those living in some far from anywhere places. People who have to stick together to afford house. Those things create "social norms" and not the other way around. You might be angry at aunts pushing social norms on people without thinking, but they did not invented those norms.

intrasight 10y ago

To stay ANYTHING, embrace change.

theprop 10y ago

"Each goes from rock climber to couch potato, from rebel to middle manager, and from sex crazed to sleep obsessed." Please married folk please tell me this ain't the case...

quickConclusion 10y ago
Married or not, it is often the case...
deleted 10y ago
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RikNieu 10y ago
They also get old and develop chronic medical conditions. Some even become parents after having kids...
zzalpha 10y ago
Please married folk please tell me this ain't the case... What, change? Of course change happens. I'm almost 40 and have been married for 13 years (and we've been together for almost 20). In the last ten years I've learned to: ski, dive, rock climb, and backcountry hike. And while this stuff isn't my wife's thing, she's always supported me 100%. So yes, change is inevitable. How you change is up to you.
framebit 10y ago
I think that's all true, but keep it can also be the opposite. From couch potato to rock climber, etc.
Arizhel 10y ago
Yes, it's really the case. Not for everyone; see the guy who replied bragging about all the physical stuff he's learned to do. However, the odds of both partners in a marriage not turning into fat couch potatoes is very small. (This happened to me: I was married, I'm like that other 40yo guy and do lots of physical stuff, my ex got fat, we got divorced.) Be very, very, very careful who you marry, and if you're not planning on having kids, think very hard about whether you need to even bother getting married at all. It's usually not a good deal, and instead will cost you more with the IRS if you're both working and have similar incomes. IMO, the entire institution is obsolete and should be abolished.

RichardHeart 10y ago

One should not set a tactic as a goal. Marriage is buy a way to amplify enjoyment in life. Some marriages are wonderful, some are deadly. To be clear in ones objectives is to hit the mark much easier. Many the married person would be better off finding a new person to enjoy marriage with, than fight desperately to not be in something new. Thus it's not the staying in a situation that's important, that's but a means to an end. That being said, flexibility is nice, and if you have more paths to happiness and less paths to sorrow, you are likely to be happier. Don't sweat the small stuff, and it's all small stuff the saying goes.

abalashov 10y ago

What I learned from two failed marriages is that above all else, you have to pick spouses with whom you can even have the luxury of doing these things. That requires finding someone of vaguely comparable social background and education level. For a lot of people, this sort of assortative mating happens naturally because they draw on relatively healthy dating pools within their community—college classmates, colleagues, church, etc. Others, however, fall through the cracks. I feel that I did because I dropped out of university at age 20 and left the world of W-2 employment at age 22. What peer group? Solipsistic professional existence in a largely solipsistic and male-dominated profession. That's a very isolating existence and full of wrong turns unless you make strong, proactive efforts to stay in healthy social circles, which the average mid-20s person isn't going to be scrupulously careful about doing. It's very easy to start pulling dating partners from /dev/urandom, particularly amidst the loneliness and angst that eventually catches up to you. This way lies madness, especially if you try to parlay that into marriage. The American national mythology teaches us to look at people in highly individualised, democratic don't-judge-me ways, and leaves us blind to the fact that not all people are destined to fruitfully communicate or relate. In more traditional cultures, where social class boundaries are more explicit, this messaging is explicitly woven into people's upbringing. For better or worse, and despite the undeniable drawbacks of "traditional" social strictures, there's a certain timeless wisdom in that. Americans, however, commonly believe that any two people can build a bridge of understanding. In reality, that requires a vaguely comparable level of cultural development and intellectual sophistication. Otherwise, you're going to have to defend every one of the values you hold dear, and you're going to feel like you're having to explain them in crayon for three hours every time you do. And you're still going to fail because you're just not going to see eye-to-eye. So, from where I sit, this "embrace change" idea is rather high on the — if you will — marital Maslow's Hierarchy. As a first step, make sure you've got basic interpersonal communication and some rudimentary compatibility sorted. For people who have been fortunate or made relatively conventional choices, this may seem an odd preoccupation, but if you've been in a union where that's lacking, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

lohengramm 10y ago
> Solipsistic professional existence in a largely solipsistic and male-dominated profession. That's a very isolating existence and full of wrong turns unless you make strong, proactive efforts to stay in healthy social circles, which the average mid-20s person isn't going to be scrupulously careful about doing. It's very easy to start pulling dating partners from /dev/urandom, particularly amidst the loneliness and angst that eventually catches up to you. That's exactly how I messed up my own life.

gregfjohnson 10y ago

Best advice I ever heard on getting ahead in life: Choose your parents wisely. My advice on marriage is similar: Be stupidly lucky in choosing a life partner. It worked for me! Last summer we celebrated our 35th anniversary. Looking forward to the next 35. (You laugh! My uncle and aunt celebrated their 70th.) Less flippantly: My parents divorced when I was 5 and my brother was 3. This was the defining trauma for much of my young life. I vowed never to do that, never to inflict that on children I might eventually have. When I married, it was simply, absolutely for good. I would die rather than violate that oath. My family urged me to do the standard thing they all did, of setting up a pre-nuptial agreement and having the prospective spouse sign it. I never considered that for a minute. I was not going to place that sort of fault line in our understanding of our marriage at the beginning. We are active Catholics (she from birth, me as an adult convert). We laugh a lot, and enjoy each others' jokes, off-hand witticisms, and spontaneous turns of phrase. I think it is fair to say that we each find the other to be extremely interesting intellectually. We tell each other we love each other frequently. We leave the kids behind and go on a cruise together once per year. My wife rather unsentimentally states that love is not a feeling, it is a decision. I think it is worth it to consciously reflect on what will communicate love to your partner in ways that they understand and find meaningful. Then, do it. The doing can be more important than whatever transitory feelings might or might lie behind it. Relatively early in our marriage, I made a career choice that was an unambiguous case of putting my career ahead of my marriage and family. The consequences of that choice resonated for years in our marriage. That was the biggest mistake I ever made, and I am grateful that our family managed to survive it. I will never do something that selfish, thoughtless, and stupid again. Things can get difficult, ugly, and painful for a time. Expanding on the point above about dying rather than walking away: That probably relates metaphorically to the NYTimes article shared by the OP. In my experience, as you and your partner grow and change over a lifetime, you have to let go of, and in effect die to the relationship you had. Over and over. There is a cycle of death, relinquishment, and renewal that is inevitable in a lifelong relationship. Would you really want to spend time as a 60-year-old with a person whose best years were their high school years, and who doggedly clings to that identity for the rest of their adult life? Of course not. You become co-authors of an amazing, surprising, unfolding story. Your and your partner's identity co-evolve. To support and encourage another person's growth inevitably involves letting go of who they used to be. (BTW, please do not take anything I said above as condoning abusiveness in a relationship. There are of course horrible and untenable relationships that simply must be ended.)

pfarnsworth 10y ago

Marriage at year 1 is nothing like marriage at year 5 is nothing like marriage at year 15 is nothing like year 20, ad infinitum. If you don't embrace the person your spouse is at this very moment, nothing will help you stay together. After having kids, our lives are very different, and we have become different people. I need to love my wife for who she is now, not yearn for who she was 8 years ago, and vice versa.

dnprock 10y ago

If this is true, then software engineers would stay married longer. And there are supporting stats. http://www.electronicproducts.com/Education/Career/Do_engineers_make_excellent_spouses_Divorce_rates_by_engineering_specialty.aspx?id=3162 http://www.electronicproducts.com/Education/Career/Do_engine... It's interesting to note that the previous study didn't look at ability to cope with change.

ajuc 10y ago
> If this is true, then software engineers would stay married longer Why? Are software engineers more adaptable?
- geodel 10y ago
  Perhaps dealing with changing requirements.

ponderatul 10y ago

One very important concept to learn about - hypergamy. I recommend any straight male having problems with inter-sex relationships, marriage to give the redpill perspective a chance.

fwn 10y ago
Not sure what you are talking about. Hypergamy is about a difference in social status between the partners. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergamy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergamy Since you were talking about a "redpill perspective" you may have wanted to find a term that describes the idea of having intercourse with a larger amount of others. Maybe you searched for "promiscuity"? If the latter is the case I'm not certain how it relates to the article. The article elaborates on common problems in monogamous relationships.

dorothy0202 10y ago

When she/he is pointing out every tiny imperfection in the relationship, she/he might be looking for grounds to break up to be with someone else, It could be because she/he doesn't want romantic messages from another to get discovered. Any sort of sneaky behavior like this is a sign, It is not so typical of me to refer professionals online but I feel like I owe a lot to my hackdemon4@gmail.com who helped me track my cheating husband when he was having an affair, I got to find out that he has been lying to me for the past 5 months and seeing two other women. I was able to get direct access to his text messages, phone conversations and all social networks on his phone remotely : what was most amazing was that his recently deleted messages were retrieved by him. If you are getting less than you deserve in your relationship and want to be sure , there is no crime in that contact hackdemon4@gmail.com. tell him angie refereed you.

dorothy0202 10y ago