Comment by jajko
7 days ago
Marrying purely for "love" and ignoring core values, mindset compatibility, what they want in life and so on is a recipe for disaster, or at least some deep regrets down the line. I haven't seen nor heard about a single success story a decade or two down the line. Whom to marry is probably the most important decision in our lives. One of reasons why marrying early is too risky - people still massively change till at least 25-30, it cal still work but chances are smaller.
Its a typical junior mistake to marry for love/lust and not think a bit on top of that, in this case I blame parents who don't have some hard talks with their kids explaining them not-so-rosy parts of adult existence. Like initial enormous physical attraction wanes over time, kids crush most of remaining, and what still remains are 2 people and how they treat relationship and each other with that lust tuned down eventually to 0, under various, often not so nice situations. But our parent's generation didn't figure it all out, in contrary the amount of actually nice relationships in higher ages ain't that high.
I didn't have such prep talk neither, nor do I know anybody who had, and had to figure it all on my own via rough trials and failures till finally figuring myself and women out, and then happy marriage (so far, hard knock on the wood). Its like expecting everybody to be sophisticated engineer, learning them to count on fingers and throwing them out and good luck, I am sure you'll figure it out eventually. Some do, some don't. Most don't I'd say.
This is the sort of thing they should teach in schools. English literature is a good venue for it.
> Whom to marry is probably the most important decision in our lives.
That's putting way too much pressure on it. Find someone you feel like you could spend the rest of your life with? Marry them, see what happens. If you get a divorce, so be it, it's not the end of the world and there is plenty of others out there, even if you're "damaged goods" or whatever your worry is.
I feel like the pressure people put around marriage it what makes it so damaging in the first place, people feeling like they have to marry in the first place, or if they're married, they need to try to stick together more than some couple who isn't married, and so on.
Just make a decision and learn from your mistakes in case you fuck up, it really isn't more complicated than that.
I'm going to assume you're a man and probably have a little less experience here than the average woman does.
This said, I am a man too, but a large part of my career was supporting lawyers and court systems, including family court systems.
Choosing the wrong partner is one of the biggest risks you take in your life, especially for a woman. This is one of those things that can easily lead to you being bankrupt with nothing. This can lead to you being abused or raped. You can end up with a child that you did not want to have. You can end up dead.
With states pushing to revoke things like no fault divorce (and women being the primary initiators of divorce) it's not hard see the traps women lived in the past coming back.
Then add the strongly religious connotations marriage has in the US and you quickly see why this is a rollercoaster that emotions and politics are not going to be removed from.
> With states pushing to revoke things like no fault divorce [...] Then add the strongly religious connotations marriage has in the US
Yeah, sorry about that. My comment kind of assumed living in a modern western country where women still have choice and religion doesn't run the country, but of course many here are in the US, so should have been a bit more specific.
> Choosing the wrong partner is one of the biggest risks you take in your life, especially for a woman. This is one of those things that can easily lead to you being bankrupt with nothing. This can lead to you being abused or raped. You can end up with a child that you did not want to have. You can end up dead.
Meanwhile FOMO has resulted in hypergamy. Long-term relationships have been on the decline because availability has resulted in situationships with the top 10% of men has become the norm. Your statement is inconsistent with a mountain of data coming from dating apps and is an appeal to emotion.
This is consistent with
> and probably have a little less experience here than the average woman does.
Which you use to insult OP's experience and inject your own mind-melting BS as fact.
Everything you state has a counter-argument for men that is equally valid. An alleged man would know this:
1. False accusation of abuse or rape - have an argument a little too loud and the neighbors call the police who is going to jail? It's the man, regardless of fault.
2. You can get baby trapped because our "progressive" society doesn't believe in the right a man should have to "abort".
3. Family courts are slanted 80/20 towards women. It's almost universally the man who loses rights to a child and gains a subsequent extra house payment in child support. Go hang out at bars and homeless shelters and figure out how many of them have been bankrupted.
4. Divorce court, despite income disparity all but disappearing, still leans heavily in favor of women.
5. There are nearly no programs for abused men, men who are going through divorce, men who got their children taken away, men who are suffering under the boot of child support/alimony, etc. In fact, you can go to jail for not paying these! Most homeless shelters will remove a man from a bed to provide one for a woman, especially if she has a child. How is this fair?
The man takes the highest possible risk entering a relationship all other things being equal.
> That's putting way too much pressure on it. Find someone you feel like you could spend the rest of your life with? Marry them, see what happens. If you get a divorce, so be it, it's not the end of the world
This is quite bad advice, because divorce can be devastating financially.
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