9 ms·

How we end up marrying the wrong person

154 points by zw123456 12y ago

digita88 12y ago
It is too much for me to marry for purely Romantic reason. I like the idea of marriages in the past. I want to look at a prospective partner's land, property, ownership, if we are on a similar cultural field, any potential alliances, education and so on.
mortenjorck 12y ago
"One of the greatest privileges of being on one’s own is the flattering illusion that one is, in truth, really quite an easy person to live with." Ouch.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  But I am. For me.
- Delmania 12y ago
  This speaks to the real issue here. There's no right or wrong person to marry, it's a matter of compatability, and how willing two people are to resolve issues. Also, the question of friendship as well.
  - alashley 12y ago
    Yes, I think two reasonable people will usually have a fighting chance of a healthy marriage.
  - cryptophile 12y ago
    People are always compatible, if they have to. That is why rampant marriage failure is a cultural problem, not an individual one. Therefore, if you just avoid to pick someone from the wrong (western) community, you should already be ok.
- contingencies 12y ago
  One of the greatest privileges of being on one’s own is the flattering illusion that one is, in truth, really quite an easy person to live with. ... as spoken by a philosopher, one of the most professionally distant stereotypes of mind. Engagement is hard, mmkay? You only get out what you put in to life. Risk aversion is hardly dashing.
panarky 12y ago
How to know when to stop dating and get married: 1) n = number of people you could date in your lifetime 2) Date n/e people without stopping. 3) After dating n/e people, marry the first person who is better than everyone you've dated previously. This method selects the best candidate about 37% of the time, which sounds bad but is superior to other systematic methods. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_stopping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_stopping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem
- bentcorner 12y ago
  I've seen this mentioned before. Has anyone rigorously applied this method when dating?
  - nostrademons 12y ago
    It's a little hard to apply in practice because a.) nobody knows just how many candidates there will be in their lifetime and b.) your idea of who the "best" candidate will be changes over time, based on your life experiences. Someone who you thought annoyingly plain in college may be a great life partner 10 years later, while the girl who was fun and exciting in college seems more than just a little crazy if she's still doing the same stuff a decade later.
    - michaelochurch 12y ago
      There's also the question of evolving mate quality. Are the people who are available at 30 worse in quality than at 20, as most people tend to believe ("all the good ones" are or get "taken")? Or are they better (which is possible, too)? It did seem, as a man, that women with good personalities improved with age, but that women with average or bad personalities became worse. Age seems to spread people out, in that way, but the well-adjusted people being selected out tended to push down the mode. There were a lot of women I dated in their late 20s who had way too many psychological cigarette burns from Biffs and Jedds ("two D's because..."). Partners of low moral character definitely do lasting damage-- that's obvious in all genders-- and women have more opportunity to get fucked up (and fucked literally) than men in college and their early 20s. That said, "all the good ones are taken" is probably more panic than reality. I remember in college, people used to descend on the freshman girls "before they get snapped up". It's a fucked-up way to think and maybe it actually has the opposite effect of taking bad people out of the market, because only a fucked-up person would think that for a college senior to stalk September-frosh ("froshing", it was called) is OK.
funkyy 12y ago
The best method to not merry wrong person - do not marry because its the best option you have. Reasoning have no saying in love. Just follow your true gut - thats good enough. Your subconscious already know if the person is good or not for you. And subconscious never follows social demand, but truly best option for you. If you gut says - dont, but your reasoning says yes - then you are up for a really bad time if you follow second.
- dominotw 12y ago
  This is a really bizarre romantic notion. So your brain is actually divided into 2 brains that are thinking independently and one that you have identified as 'gut' is superior in matters of choosing a partner?
  - funkyy 12y ago
    Let me say this. Go with this thought - after the wedding it will be just a downhill and all the bad things in your partner will become worse. If you can live with that - cool, go and marry your partner. But if you honestly will think about it and think like "it will be better" or "he/she will change/stay the same" or "after wedding it will be much better" - you are screwed. You cannot bet your life on "it will be only better". Those things dont work like that, I see way to many people divorcing because they made this bet. I hate the way to young people marrying out of "it makes sense" while guy goes to strip clubs every weekend and girls dream about some sexy guy taking them for a date. Its sick and sounds like pathology. Its really, really wrong. Mortgage/Taxes is not the reason to get married. Love is. If you call me romantic, I am sorry, but it seems you didnt really seen true love.
  - alashley 12y ago
    I think reasoning can convince us of anything. The sky is green, grass is blue, etc. People can make themselves believe anything, and sometimes if we get lonely/desperate enough, we rationalize someone's obvious incompatibilities away.
  - alextgordon 12y ago
    Many people are happy in relationships that make no logical sense whatsoever. Or rather, the relationships do make sense, but they are unaware or unwilling to consciously recognise the reasons why. On the other hand, feeling when you're happy or not is something anyone can do.
marincounty 12y ago
Bill Murry summed it up pretty well, 'Take her around the world--nice and, not so nice places; then decide if you still want to get married.' (That is if you have the funds?) Personally, I was told this by an old Sailor. "If she is willing to live on a boat in order to save up money; You better marry her. It takes a special type of woman to live on a boat. If she is willing to put up with the cold, and misery of daily boat life--she is an angel, or really loves your ass?"
- cryptophile 12y ago
  Take her around the world--nice and, not so nice places; then decide if you still want to get married. I think that this is the wrong approach. Anybody is suitable for marriage, on the condition that their culture says that there is no other realistic option than to stay married. That is the reason why both of you will do what it takes to make it work, and believe me that it will work. In that respect, women from the wrong (western) communities are simply not suitable for marriage. Pick randomly a woman elsewhere and you should be ok.
  - eropple 12y ago
    You post this misogynistic screed knowing full well--or you should, if you're any sort of functioning adult--that end case of what you describe so glowingly is quite often the female partner learning how to hide black eyes or worse. "Western" culture not jamming people together because reasons is a feature, not a bug. Your baggage about women is not welcome here.
    - mbrock 12y ago
      thank you
    - cryptophile 12y ago
      This is how 80% of the world thinks about marriage. This is also how people in the West thought about marriage only a few decades ago. In other words, it is the normal way of thinking about marriage. There is nothing misogynistic about that. Why would other cultures be misogynistic? Keeping marriages together is a feature, not a bug.
gilgoomesh 12y ago
This is a good list of hypotheses... but shouldn't the article attempt to support these claims with some numbers to back it up or evaluations from experts? Feels a little hollow as it is.
- alexqgb 12y ago
  What you just described would increase the amount of work involved by a factor of 10 (in round numbers). So "should" it? Given that you paid nothing for it, the better question is why should anyone give a fig about what you think if all you have to day is "Interesting, but how about doing a lot more work...for free." If you're truly interested, why don't you get in touch with the writer, tell him what you'd like to know, and ask how much he'll charge to supply it. He's likely to be pleased, and you may get what you're after.
mistermann 12y ago
Ten: “Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed.”
joeclark77 12y ago
They partly diagnose some of the dysfunctions of marriage, but their prescription that we should psychoanalyze the "candidates" (as if you can treat a good person that casually) and try to match ourselves based on some kind of psychological compatibility is nuts. The reasons marriages are failing so much these days is that we live in a culture that does not value, or even understand, what marriage is. Marriage works when both partners treat it as a lifelong partnership and they work to overcome their problems. If you were to engineer a marriage between two people with perfectly matched personality types, phobias, etc, they'd still end up divorced in a few years if they've been taught to think of marriage as a temporary exchange of romantic favors "until I get bored" or "until something better comes along".
- burntsushi 12y ago
  I too thought some of the prescriptions were a little strange, but I think the author brought it down to earth with: We need a new set of criteria. We should wonder: - how are they mad - how can one raise children with them - how can one develop together - how can one remain friends
copperx 12y ago
One of the best pieces that I have read regarding love and marriage. I loved the part on savouring the fleeting moments of happiness in our life.
- john2x 12y ago
  Yeah. Reading "We want to freeze happiness" struck a chord with me.
anotherevan 12y ago
I remember a colleague who’s relationship was starting to get serious had a couple of reservations as, “She’s got some issues.” My response was, “Everybody’s got baggage. You have to figure out if your baggage and her baggage make a matching set.” I’ve been married twenty-one years, and neither of us are the same two people who got married all that time ago. There have been times when we’ve discussed if the two people we’ve become should stay married. There’s been times when love is strained, times when things are just comfortable, and times when my heart still beats faster when she walks in the room. The number one piece of advice that I received that has stood the test of time is being able to communicate. If you are able to share with each other your dreams, fantasies, desires, fears, faults and foibles, you have a relationship that can be built on and can last.
- lifeisstillgood 12y ago
  Wishing you another twenty one years Thank you for some sensible words
B-Con 12y ago
> In a wiser society, prospective partners would put each other through detailed psychological questionnaires and send themselves off to be assessed at length by teams of psychologists. My wife and I did premarital counseling. I highly recommend it. We learned a lot about ourselves, each other, and us as a couple. (We did it with our pastor and a couple we respected. But I recommend it regardless of religious ideology.)
Xcelerate 12y ago
I would be highly interested in a study that analyzes people who have been married for 50+ years and compares them to people who have been divorced. I have some opinions on what leads people to ultimately get divorced; however, without any evidence to back them up, those thoughts aren't even worth mentioning. My belief is that marriage (at least for me personally) is a lifelong commitment, and divorce is only an option in the cases of abuse or cheating. In that sense, my biggest fear toward getting married is that the person I marry would at some point change who they are ("get bored" in modern parlance) and divorce me. At this stage in my life (24 years old), I'm slowly realizing that I probably won't ever get married even though I would really like to... I just can't imagine meeting a person I feel so certain and comfortable about. Heck, I can barely even find someone I want to date. I was speaking with my sister (engaged) the other day and asked her how she knew she had met the right person, and she told me that her fiancé is the only guy ever that she felt like she wasn't playing "mind games" with. That's particularly interesting to me, because I've never been with someone who I didn't feel like I was playing those games with.
- Sammi 12y ago
  Scientific research on successful vs unsuccessful long term relationships has already been done by the Gottmann Institution. You can get a good presentation of the findings here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLXX8wzvT7c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLXX8wzvT7c My warning from bitter personal experience: Don't go into a long term relationship without learning from Gottman first!
- DanHulton 12y ago
  Over fifty years? The person you marry is going to change. YOU'RE going to change. Marriage is agreeing to let another person have first dibs over wooing the new person you change into, and vice versa.
  - ncarroll 12y ago
    > Marriage is agreeing to let another person have first dibs over wooing the new person you change into, and vice versa. Well said. And then, divorce happens when one or the other lets their option drop.
ilaksh 12y ago
I don't think that the reasons for marrying are as far removed from primate (or mammal, or animal in general) mate selection as people think they are. Or more likely, people don't realize at all the degree to which their behaviors and decisions are instinctual, and are confusing the rationalizations that are layered on top for the actual explanation. Why do two dogs choose to mate?
- lukifer 12y ago
  For that matter, if the couple procreates, they have validated whatever biological forces brought them together, regardless of their happiness or longevity.
- colordrops 12y ago
  Despite your thesis that our behavior is not explainable, your comment is profoundly rational.
- hrjet 12y ago
  I am led to believe that human marriage is much more than just animal mating. In a liberal society, such as the western countries, where mating before marriage is common, I don't think there is any confusion between the two. Your comment might be more applicable to eastern societies where mating before marriage is taboo. One only get to mate with the one they "chose" to marry.
- Turing_Machine 12y ago
  Dogs mate and then go their separate ways. People do that, too. Neither is anything at all like the decades-long commitment of a good marriage. While it may seem like sex is the main feature (and it is important), as someone who maintained a relationship for twenty years (she passed away five years ago) I can assure you that it's far from the only factor involved.
  - NIL8 12y ago
    I'm sorry for your loss, but I am grateful for your comment. I'm coming up on 23 years of marriage and I don't know how I could handle such a loss.
cryptophile 12y ago
I do not believe that marrying the "wrong person" is fundamentally that common. The problem is rather that it could be simple and easy to divorce someone for the inevitable quirks that you do not want to learn to put with. That is why I have never considered and would never consider to marry a woman from a mainstream western community. The fact that it is culturally an easy option to move on, turns them into unsuitable marriage material. I would just be getting into an accident waiting to happen. Prince Charles and lady Diana only divorced because it was culturally acceptable and rather easy to do. Otherwise, they would still be married today. Especially Diana would have learned how to deal with the drawbacks of that, and probably not be more unhappy for it.
- halhen 12y ago
  As a newly divorced mainstream western person, I might have an anecdotal perspective on this. You don't divorce because of how easy it is. You divorce despite how hard it is. And while the cultural boundaries are reasonable (not encouraging, mind you), it is the finances, the practical things, the emotions, the social consequences that hurt. And, if you have kids, rip their opportunity to live in the same house as both parents. My divorce was a "good" one. We agreed, and make the best of it together, not just for the kids' sake but for each other's as well. Still, I never wanna do this again. According to other people I've talked to, the books I've read, and the therapists I've been to, the idea that couples divorce too easily is simply false. I'm sure you can find examples to point to, but, at least around the Nordics, it simply is not the case. If you marry a woman who would divorce you in a wink, the reason is you not getting to know her beforehand, not some divorce-culture.
  - sheepmullet 12y ago
    "According to other people I've talked to, the books I've read, and the therapists I've been to, the idea that couples divorce too easily is simply false." I don't think it is about how "easy" it is. It's about when is divorce considered the "right thing"? In the west we often consider divorce the right option based on feelings and desires. Don't settle. You have the right to be happy etc.
- 12y ago
rokhayakebe 12y ago
The keyword is "wrong" as in being married and happy for 10 years, then divorcing means the marriage was unsuccessful. Perhaps we should rethink it as "we'll remain married as long as we are both happy in it." Marriage may just not have to be forever.
- Karellen 12y ago
  What is marriage? I thought that one of the primary concepts behind it is that it's a "commitment". (If it's not that, what is it?) However, if you change that to "we'll keep doing this until we don't feel like doing it", that's not really much of a commitment anymore, is it? After all, doing something you enjoy doing until you don't feel like doing it anymore, is pretty much what you do anyway, by default. What is marriage, really, except a promise to try and keep going and work things through, even when you don't want to anymore?
  - seunosewa 12y ago
    How about "until our kids grow up and start their own lives?"
  - bluehex 12y ago
    It seems almost pathological to commit to continuing to do something even when you don't want to do it anymore. And there's no way to predict how you will feel in that regard a couple years later. What is the point of making a promise like that? I'm not arguing for the parent's more lax stance on the commitment of marriage; I'm just saying I don't see why people choose to marry to begin with.
swframe 12y ago
I read a paper that studied why some marriages work. The author concluded that in those marriages, the couple worked to calm each other. I've used that in my relationships and it has worked well. I make an agreement with my partner upfront that we must make sure that one of us stays calm when the other is angry and the angry person can't harm/insult/embarrass/etc the calm person. The angry person should explain how they feel without resorting to name calling or abusing the other person. If both of us become angry then we must separate until one of us can be calm. With that algorithm, no one gets hurt in an argument and arguments don't escalate into destructive events. My relationships are still limited by the fact that couples must "agree to disagree". This piles up and eventually there are too many disagreements to ignore.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
h1karu 12y ago
Unfortunately in the US we have a divorce industry that spends billions of dollars on advertising targeting mostly women, but also men with attempts to normalize divorce or even to make it seem fashionable. Basically if you look at the hard data and examine the strong correlation between the aggregate divorce related TV advertising spend over the last 50 hears and the number of divorces in the USA a clear picture begins to emerge. This is just another marketing success story where PR firms spent billions to educate a market.. to help the divorce industry reach "product / market fit"
- kstenerud 12y ago
  Or: The divorce industry has been a significant help in reducing the stigma associated with divorce, such that people can now make their own decisions without the societal pressure to stay in an unhappy marriage.
  - h1karu 12y ago
    Through well measured advertising campaigns they changed the definition of what a "happy marriage" means so that it's new meaning aligns more closely with the idea of being in a satisfactory employment situation. Everyone knows that it's not a good idea to jump from job to job too quickly, but if you've been at the same company for a long time, and a much better seeming opportunity presents itself.. then in today's world.. thanks to the PR spin machine and the divorce industry.. jumping ship seems like the only sensible thing to do, after all lets not forget that there's a huge cash reward involved which will more than cover the cost the attorneys fees many times over. Marriage has been reduced to a transaction, a mere token in the consumer economy. The big question in my mind is, was this multi-billion dollar, multi-generational PR campaign coordinated out of greed by the divorce industry or is it an attempt by sinister forces to gradually bend the zeitgeist of western civilization in a certain ?dehumanizing? direction ? I suppose attempting to trace causation is not the most efficient means by which to remedy the situation, but yet these thoughts arise.
PhantomGremlin 12y ago
I hate to be fatalistic about marriage, but this quip from somewhere on the Internet sums it up: 50% of marriages end in divorce, the other 50% end in death. Mazel tov.

154 points by zw123456 12y ago

It is too much for me to marry for purely Romantic reason. I like the idea of marriages in the past. I want to look at a prospective partner's land, property, ownership, if we are on a similar cultural field, any potential alliances, education and so on.

mortenjorck 12y ago

"One of the greatest privileges of being on one’s own is the flattering illusion that one is, in truth, really quite an easy person to live with." Ouch.

dredmorbius 12y ago
But I am. For me.
Delmania 12y ago
This speaks to the real issue here. There's no right or wrong person to marry, it's a matter of compatability, and how willing two people are to resolve issues. Also, the question of friendship as well.
- alashley 12y ago
  Yes, I think two reasonable people will usually have a fighting chance of a healthy marriage.
- cryptophile 12y ago
  People are always compatible, if they have to. That is why rampant marriage failure is a cultural problem, not an individual one. Therefore, if you just avoid to pick someone from the wrong (western) community, you should already be ok.
contingencies 12y ago
One of the greatest privileges of being on one’s own is the flattering illusion that one is, in truth, really quite an easy person to live with. ... as spoken by a philosopher, one of the most professionally distant stereotypes of mind. Engagement is hard, mmkay? You only get out what you put in to life. Risk aversion is hardly dashing.

panarky 12y ago

How to know when to stop dating and get married: 1) n = number of people you could date in your lifetime 2) Date n/e people without stopping. 3) After dating n/e people, marry the first person who is better than everyone you've dated previously. This method selects the best candidate about 37% of the time, which sounds bad but is superior to other systematic methods. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_stopping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_stopping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem

bentcorner 12y ago
I've seen this mentioned before. Has anyone rigorously applied this method when dating?
- nostrademons 12y ago
  It's a little hard to apply in practice because a.) nobody knows just how many candidates there will be in their lifetime and b.) your idea of who the "best" candidate will be changes over time, based on your life experiences. Someone who you thought annoyingly plain in college may be a great life partner 10 years later, while the girl who was fun and exciting in college seems more than just a little crazy if she's still doing the same stuff a decade later.
  - michaelochurch 12y ago
    There's also the question of evolving mate quality. Are the people who are available at 30 worse in quality than at 20, as most people tend to believe ("all the good ones" are or get "taken")? Or are they better (which is possible, too)? It did seem, as a man, that women with good personalities improved with age, but that women with average or bad personalities became worse. Age seems to spread people out, in that way, but the well-adjusted people being selected out tended to push down the mode. There were a lot of women I dated in their late 20s who had way too many psychological cigarette burns from Biffs and Jedds ("two D's because..."). Partners of low moral character definitely do lasting damage-- that's obvious in all genders-- and women have more opportunity to get fucked up (and fucked literally) than men in college and their early 20s. That said, "all the good ones are taken" is probably more panic than reality. I remember in college, people used to descend on the freshman girls "before they get snapped up". It's a fucked-up way to think and maybe it actually has the opposite effect of taking bad people out of the market, because only a fucked-up person would think that for a college senior to stalk September-frosh ("froshing", it was called) is OK.

funkyy 12y ago

The best method to not merry wrong person - do not marry because its the best option you have. Reasoning have no saying in love. Just follow your true gut - thats good enough. Your subconscious already know if the person is good or not for you. And subconscious never follows social demand, but truly best option for you. If you gut says - dont, but your reasoning says yes - then you are up for a really bad time if you follow second.

dominotw 12y ago
This is a really bizarre romantic notion. So your brain is actually divided into 2 brains that are thinking independently and one that you have identified as 'gut' is superior in matters of choosing a partner?
- funkyy 12y ago
  Let me say this. Go with this thought - after the wedding it will be just a downhill and all the bad things in your partner will become worse. If you can live with that - cool, go and marry your partner. But if you honestly will think about it and think like "it will be better" or "he/she will change/stay the same" or "after wedding it will be much better" - you are screwed. You cannot bet your life on "it will be only better". Those things dont work like that, I see way to many people divorcing because they made this bet. I hate the way to young people marrying out of "it makes sense" while guy goes to strip clubs every weekend and girls dream about some sexy guy taking them for a date. Its sick and sounds like pathology. Its really, really wrong. Mortgage/Taxes is not the reason to get married. Love is. If you call me romantic, I am sorry, but it seems you didnt really seen true love.
- alashley 12y ago
  I think reasoning can convince us of anything. The sky is green, grass is blue, etc. People can make themselves believe anything, and sometimes if we get lonely/desperate enough, we rationalize someone's obvious incompatibilities away.
- alextgordon 12y ago
  Many people are happy in relationships that make no logical sense whatsoever. Or rather, the relationships do make sense, but they are unaware or unwilling to consciously recognise the reasons why. On the other hand, feeling when you're happy or not is something anyone can do.

marincounty 12y ago

Bill Murry summed it up pretty well, 'Take her around the world--nice and, not so nice places; then decide if you still want to get married.' (That is if you have the funds?) Personally, I was told this by an old Sailor. "If she is willing to live on a boat in order to save up money; You better marry her. It takes a special type of woman to live on a boat. If she is willing to put up with the cold, and misery of daily boat life--she is an angel, or really loves your ass?"

cryptophile 12y ago
Take her around the world--nice and, not so nice places; then decide if you still want to get married. I think that this is the wrong approach. Anybody is suitable for marriage, on the condition that their culture says that there is no other realistic option than to stay married. That is the reason why both of you will do what it takes to make it work, and believe me that it will work. In that respect, women from the wrong (western) communities are simply not suitable for marriage. Pick randomly a woman elsewhere and you should be ok.
- eropple 12y ago
  You post this misogynistic screed knowing full well--or you should, if you're any sort of functioning adult--that end case of what you describe so glowingly is quite often the female partner learning how to hide black eyes or worse. "Western" culture not jamming people together because reasons is a feature, not a bug. Your baggage about women is not welcome here.
  - mbrock 12y ago
    thank you
  - cryptophile 12y ago
    This is how 80% of the world thinks about marriage. This is also how people in the West thought about marriage only a few decades ago. In other words, it is the normal way of thinking about marriage. There is nothing misogynistic about that. Why would other cultures be misogynistic? Keeping marriages together is a feature, not a bug.

gilgoomesh 12y ago

This is a good list of hypotheses... but shouldn't the article attempt to support these claims with some numbers to back it up or evaluations from experts? Feels a little hollow as it is.

alexqgb 12y ago
What you just described would increase the amount of work involved by a factor of 10 (in round numbers). So "should" it? Given that you paid nothing for it, the better question is why should anyone give a fig about what you think if all you have to day is "Interesting, but how about doing a lot more work...for free." If you're truly interested, why don't you get in touch with the writer, tell him what you'd like to know, and ask how much he'll charge to supply it. He's likely to be pleased, and you may get what you're after.

mistermann 12y ago

Ten: “Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed.”

joeclark77 12y ago

They partly diagnose some of the dysfunctions of marriage, but their prescription that we should psychoanalyze the "candidates" (as if you can treat a good person that casually) and try to match ourselves based on some kind of psychological compatibility is nuts. The reasons marriages are failing so much these days is that we live in a culture that does not value, or even understand, what marriage is. Marriage works when both partners treat it as a lifelong partnership and they work to overcome their problems. If you were to engineer a marriage between two people with perfectly matched personality types, phobias, etc, they'd still end up divorced in a few years if they've been taught to think of marriage as a temporary exchange of romantic favors "until I get bored" or "until something better comes along".

burntsushi 12y ago
I too thought some of the prescriptions were a little strange, but I think the author brought it down to earth with: We need a new set of criteria. We should wonder: - how are they mad - how can one raise children with them - how can one develop together - how can one remain friends

copperx 12y ago

One of the best pieces that I have read regarding love and marriage. I loved the part on savouring the fleeting moments of happiness in our life.

john2x 12y ago
Yeah. Reading "We want to freeze happiness" struck a chord with me.

anotherevan 12y ago

I remember a colleague who’s relationship was starting to get serious had a couple of reservations as, “She’s got some issues.” My response was, “Everybody’s got baggage. You have to figure out if your baggage and her baggage make a matching set.” I’ve been married twenty-one years, and neither of us are the same two people who got married all that time ago. There have been times when we’ve discussed if the two people we’ve become should stay married. There’s been times when love is strained, times when things are just comfortable, and times when my heart still beats faster when she walks in the room. The number one piece of advice that I received that has stood the test of time is being able to communicate. If you are able to share with each other your dreams, fantasies, desires, fears, faults and foibles, you have a relationship that can be built on and can last.

lifeisstillgood 12y ago
Wishing you another twenty one years Thank you for some sensible words

B-Con 12y ago

> In a wiser society, prospective partners would put each other through detailed psychological questionnaires and send themselves off to be assessed at length by teams of psychologists. My wife and I did premarital counseling. I highly recommend it. We learned a lot about ourselves, each other, and us as a couple. (We did it with our pastor and a couple we respected. But I recommend it regardless of religious ideology.)

Xcelerate 12y ago

I would be highly interested in a study that analyzes people who have been married for 50+ years and compares them to people who have been divorced. I have some opinions on what leads people to ultimately get divorced; however, without any evidence to back them up, those thoughts aren't even worth mentioning. My belief is that marriage (at least for me personally) is a lifelong commitment, and divorce is only an option in the cases of abuse or cheating. In that sense, my biggest fear toward getting married is that the person I marry would at some point change who they are ("get bored" in modern parlance) and divorce me. At this stage in my life (24 years old), I'm slowly realizing that I probably won't ever get married even though I would really like to... I just can't imagine meeting a person I feel so certain and comfortable about. Heck, I can barely even find someone I want to date. I was speaking with my sister (engaged) the other day and asked her how she knew she had met the right person, and she told me that her fiancé is the only guy ever that she felt like she wasn't playing "mind games" with. That's particularly interesting to me, because I've never been with someone who I didn't feel like I was playing those games with.

Sammi 12y ago
Scientific research on successful vs unsuccessful long term relationships has already been done by the Gottmann Institution. You can get a good presentation of the findings here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLXX8wzvT7c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLXX8wzvT7c My warning from bitter personal experience: Don't go into a long term relationship without learning from Gottman first!
DanHulton 12y ago
Over fifty years? The person you marry is going to change. YOU'RE going to change. Marriage is agreeing to let another person have first dibs over wooing the new person you change into, and vice versa.
- ncarroll 12y ago
  > Marriage is agreeing to let another person have first dibs over wooing the new person you change into, and vice versa. Well said. And then, divorce happens when one or the other lets their option drop.

ilaksh 12y ago

I don't think that the reasons for marrying are as far removed from primate (or mammal, or animal in general) mate selection as people think they are. Or more likely, people don't realize at all the degree to which their behaviors and decisions are instinctual, and are confusing the rationalizations that are layered on top for the actual explanation. Why do two dogs choose to mate?

lukifer 12y ago
For that matter, if the couple procreates, they have validated whatever biological forces brought them together, regardless of their happiness or longevity.
colordrops 12y ago
Despite your thesis that our behavior is not explainable, your comment is profoundly rational.
hrjet 12y ago
I am led to believe that human marriage is much more than just animal mating. In a liberal society, such as the western countries, where mating before marriage is common, I don't think there is any confusion between the two. Your comment might be more applicable to eastern societies where mating before marriage is taboo. One only get to mate with the one they "chose" to marry.
Turing_Machine 12y ago
Dogs mate and then go their separate ways. People do that, too. Neither is anything at all like the decades-long commitment of a good marriage. While it may seem like sex is the main feature (and it is important), as someone who maintained a relationship for twenty years (she passed away five years ago) I can assure you that it's far from the only factor involved.
- NIL8 12y ago
  I'm sorry for your loss, but I am grateful for your comment. I'm coming up on 23 years of marriage and I don't know how I could handle such a loss.

cryptophile 12y ago

I do not believe that marrying the "wrong person" is fundamentally that common. The problem is rather that it could be simple and easy to divorce someone for the inevitable quirks that you do not want to learn to put with. That is why I have never considered and would never consider to marry a woman from a mainstream western community. The fact that it is culturally an easy option to move on, turns them into unsuitable marriage material. I would just be getting into an accident waiting to happen. Prince Charles and lady Diana only divorced because it was culturally acceptable and rather easy to do. Otherwise, they would still be married today. Especially Diana would have learned how to deal with the drawbacks of that, and probably not be more unhappy for it.

halhen 12y ago
As a newly divorced mainstream western person, I might have an anecdotal perspective on this. You don't divorce because of how easy it is. You divorce despite how hard it is. And while the cultural boundaries are reasonable (not encouraging, mind you), it is the finances, the practical things, the emotions, the social consequences that hurt. And, if you have kids, rip their opportunity to live in the same house as both parents. My divorce was a "good" one. We agreed, and make the best of it together, not just for the kids' sake but for each other's as well. Still, I never wanna do this again. According to other people I've talked to, the books I've read, and the therapists I've been to, the idea that couples divorce too easily is simply false. I'm sure you can find examples to point to, but, at least around the Nordics, it simply is not the case. If you marry a woman who would divorce you in a wink, the reason is you not getting to know her beforehand, not some divorce-culture.
- sheepmullet 12y ago
  "According to other people I've talked to, the books I've read, and the therapists I've been to, the idea that couples divorce too easily is simply false." I don't think it is about how "easy" it is. It's about when is divorce considered the "right thing"? In the west we often consider divorce the right option based on feelings and desires. Don't settle. You have the right to be happy etc.
12y ago

rokhayakebe 12y ago

The keyword is "wrong" as in being married and happy for 10 years, then divorcing means the marriage was unsuccessful. Perhaps we should rethink it as "we'll remain married as long as we are both happy in it." Marriage may just not have to be forever.

Karellen 12y ago
What is marriage? I thought that one of the primary concepts behind it is that it's a "commitment". (If it's not that, what is it?) However, if you change that to "we'll keep doing this until we don't feel like doing it", that's not really much of a commitment anymore, is it? After all, doing something you enjoy doing until you don't feel like doing it anymore, is pretty much what you do anyway, by default. What is marriage, really, except a promise to try and keep going and work things through, even when you don't want to anymore?
- seunosewa 12y ago
  How about "until our kids grow up and start their own lives?"
- bluehex 12y ago
  It seems almost pathological to commit to continuing to do something even when you don't want to do it anymore. And there's no way to predict how you will feel in that regard a couple years later. What is the point of making a promise like that? I'm not arguing for the parent's more lax stance on the commitment of marriage; I'm just saying I don't see why people choose to marry to begin with.

swframe 12y ago

I read a paper that studied why some marriages work. The author concluded that in those marriages, the couple worked to calm each other. I've used that in my relationships and it has worked well. I make an agreement with my partner upfront that we must make sure that one of us stays calm when the other is angry and the angry person can't harm/insult/embarrass/etc the calm person. The angry person should explain how they feel without resorting to name calling or abusing the other person. If both of us become angry then we must separate until one of us can be calm. With that algorithm, no one gets hurt in an argument and arguments don't escalate into destructive events. My relationships are still limited by the fact that couples must "agree to disagree". This piles up and eventually there are too many disagreements to ignore.

deleted 12y ago

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h1karu 12y ago

Unfortunately in the US we have a divorce industry that spends billions of dollars on advertising targeting mostly women, but also men with attempts to normalize divorce or even to make it seem fashionable. Basically if you look at the hard data and examine the strong correlation between the aggregate divorce related TV advertising spend over the last 50 hears and the number of divorces in the USA a clear picture begins to emerge. This is just another marketing success story where PR firms spent billions to educate a market.. to help the divorce industry reach "product / market fit"

kstenerud 12y ago
Or: The divorce industry has been a significant help in reducing the stigma associated with divorce, such that people can now make their own decisions without the societal pressure to stay in an unhappy marriage.
- h1karu 12y ago
  Through well measured advertising campaigns they changed the definition of what a "happy marriage" means so that it's new meaning aligns more closely with the idea of being in a satisfactory employment situation. Everyone knows that it's not a good idea to jump from job to job too quickly, but if you've been at the same company for a long time, and a much better seeming opportunity presents itself.. then in today's world.. thanks to the PR spin machine and the divorce industry.. jumping ship seems like the only sensible thing to do, after all lets not forget that there's a huge cash reward involved which will more than cover the cost the attorneys fees many times over. Marriage has been reduced to a transaction, a mere token in the consumer economy. The big question in my mind is, was this multi-billion dollar, multi-generational PR campaign coordinated out of greed by the divorce industry or is it an attempt by sinister forces to gradually bend the zeitgeist of western civilization in a certain ?dehumanizing? direction ? I suppose attempting to trace causation is not the most efficient means by which to remedy the situation, but yet these thoughts arise.

PhantomGremlin 12y ago

I hate to be fatalistic about marriage, but this quip from somewhere on the Internet sums it up: 50% of marriages end in divorce, the other 50% end in death. Mazel tov.