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Disclaimer: This is personal opinion If you are marrying someone who would actually weigh the option of dumping you for monetary gain, you're doing it wrong. T

by ajju 18y ago

Disclaimer: This is personal opinion If you are marrying someone who would actually weigh the option of dumping you for monetary gain, you're doing it wrong. This is probably incredibly hard to do without some luck, but you should marry someone who would never consider monetary gain in a decision about the relationship. In more concrete terms, someone who, even at the point where your relationship is ending (if it comes to that), is fair-minded enough, has enough self-respect and values your time together enough to give you a fair share. Many people try to counter this by saying "People (and by this they mean, their core principles) change" (in other words people abandon their principles). I believe there are people who would never abandon their core principles. Marry one of them.

shard 18y ago
Unfortunately it may take years to figure out what kind of person someone else is, and they may not want to wait until you figure it out. In the end, it's always a gamble based on partial information.
HeyLaughingBoy 18y ago
I have to agree with you completely. It's not hard to marry someone you know very well. The problem is that like the article said, a lot of people are pressured and they end up getting married before they really know each other. I met my wife online and we got married three years later. The judge commented that most couples he married who met online did it after about a year. A few months before our 5th anniversary we decided to get divorced. A few weeks before that same anniversary we changed our minds. Will we, won't we. Who knows. People change; accept that and learn to enjoy it. But as you said, some people's deeply held core values will probably remain the same and that's really what you're marrying. As an aside, when I saw the article on HN my first thought was that someone was making analogy between marriage and startup partnerships :-)
- shard 18y ago
  I've had a couple of women tell me this on separate occasions: "if the guys is not willing to get married after a year, then it's probably not going to happen." These women don't know each other. One of them learned it from her mother. Sometimes a woman's drive to bear children is very strong, and her biological clock is telling her that she doesn't have the option to wait. Finally, an ex-girlfriend told me this: "Women get married when they feel it's the right guy. Men get married when they feel it's the right time." I don't know about the women's side, but the men's side seems to hold, and the right time is about 30 years old, as most of my friends got married within a few years of each other.
cousin_it 18y ago
Even if financial and legal incencives don't matter for you, they do matter for many people. If you start rewarding women with money for dumping their husbands (as vaksel implied US law does), many families that were close to the brink will disintegrate and many okay families will move that much closer to the brink. We don't live in a world composed of ideal men and women - that's why we need laws and money in the first place. I find your comment similar in spirit to a common pattern of defending the C++ language against criticism: the idea that, if C++ shortcomings worry you, then the root of your problem is bad design and muddled thinking. It's true, but the language could work to fix the problem instead of making it worse. So too with divorce laws.
- ajju 18y ago
  I have no opinion on the quality of US divorce law. I am saying it should be irrelevant to you if you choose your partner wisely - US divorce law cannot and does not supercede an amicable separation agreement between two people. We don't live in a world of ideal people but I have found that there are enough principled people in the world that with some luck and significant effort you should be able to find one who is principled. In the vein of your example, I am saying don't complain about Java's (an unprincipled spouse) performance on Windows (an imperfect legal system), use python instead.
  - cousin_it 18y ago
    In my example the unprincipled spouse corresponded to muddled thinking and C++ corresponded to the laws. So your advice of "use Python" translates to "move to another country", quite sensible advice for bachelors in countries where laws favor women. And your own example doesn't parse for me: Java should be faster than Python in most cases. (Yeah, I'm all for bringing the thread back on topic as a programming discussion.) :-)

by ajju 18y ago

shard 18y ago

Unfortunately it may take years to figure out what kind of person someone else is, and they may not want to wait until you figure it out. In the end, it's always a gamble based on partial information.

HeyLaughingBoy 18y ago

I have to agree with you completely. It's not hard to marry someone you know very well. The problem is that like the article said, a lot of people are pressured and they end up getting married before they really know each other. I met my wife online and we got married three years later. The judge commented that most couples he married who met online did it after about a year. A few months before our 5th anniversary we decided to get divorced. A few weeks before that same anniversary we changed our minds. Will we, won't we. Who knows. People change; accept that and learn to enjoy it. But as you said, some people's deeply held core values will probably remain the same and that's really what you're marrying. As an aside, when I saw the article on HN my first thought was that someone was making analogy between marriage and startup partnerships :-)

shard 18y ago
I've had a couple of women tell me this on separate occasions: "if the guys is not willing to get married after a year, then it's probably not going to happen." These women don't know each other. One of them learned it from her mother. Sometimes a woman's drive to bear children is very strong, and her biological clock is telling her that she doesn't have the option to wait. Finally, an ex-girlfriend told me this: "Women get married when they feel it's the right guy. Men get married when they feel it's the right time." I don't know about the women's side, but the men's side seems to hold, and the right time is about 30 years old, as most of my friends got married within a few years of each other.

cousin_it 18y ago

Even if financial and legal incencives don't matter for you, they do matter for many people. If you start rewarding women with money for dumping their husbands (as vaksel implied US law does), many families that were close to the brink will disintegrate and many okay families will move that much closer to the brink. We don't live in a world composed of ideal men and women - that's why we need laws and money in the first place. I find your comment similar in spirit to a common pattern of defending the C++ language against criticism: the idea that, if C++ shortcomings worry you, then the root of your problem is bad design and muddled thinking. It's true, but the language could work to fix the problem instead of making it worse. So too with divorce laws.

ajju 18y ago
I have no opinion on the quality of US divorce law. I am saying it should be irrelevant to you if you choose your partner wisely - US divorce law cannot and does not supercede an amicable separation agreement between two people. We don't live in a world of ideal people but I have found that there are enough principled people in the world that with some luck and significant effort you should be able to find one who is principled. In the vein of your example, I am saying don't complain about Java's (an unprincipled spouse) performance on Windows (an imperfect legal system), use python instead.
- cousin_it 18y ago
  In my example the unprincipled spouse corresponded to muddled thinking and C++ corresponded to the laws. So your advice of "use Python" translates to "move to another country", quite sensible advice for bachelors in countries where laws favor women. And your own example doesn't parse for me: Java should be faster than Python in most cases. (Yeah, I'm all for bringing the thread back on topic as a programming discussion.) :-)