Lots of people marrying for the wrong reasons/not ready

[Moonlight Butterfly]

My guy friend just broke up with a girl who was asking if they were going to get engaged after 5 months.....

....

wat.

Some people are just nuts. But then I'm 30 and all my mates are married with kids so what do I know.

My parents were a bloody disaster and living with them was like being in a warzone but they knew each other since they were 12 so I don't know what was going on there...they stayed married up until my dad died so I guess they were happy? I dunno. :/

 

[Tiger King]

on the first page someone posted a graph of divorce rates in the USA, it dosent say the ages of the divorcees only that they are women, 15 and upwards.
so how do we know a high divorce rate is caused by people getting married after knowing each other ten minutes.
what about a ten plus year relationship dissolved over a midlife crisis?

more info needed methinks.

my opinion: a relationship takes work, couples argue, it happens even though some people try as hard as possible to look perfect to outsiders.
basically a relationship will last as long as the ammount of effort put into it.

 

[Colour Scientist]

I think you presume your case to be the norm though, when it isn't. I'm betting if you polled all the children of divorcees who were at least somewhat young when it happened, most would tell you it wasn't a "relief" that their parents separated.

And, the numbers speak for themselves. I think most don't try hard enough to fix the marriage or the divorce rate wouldn't be so high. Then again, maybe if you shouldn't have married to start with, no amount of work would fix it. But I think people should try harder on all fronts.

Actually, anyone I've ever met whose parents had a divorce when they were young said it was like a weight being lifted. They hated the fighting and the tension, kids are very perceptive. If two people are in a toxic relationship, they're going to be fighting all of the time which isn't a healthy environment for children to grow up in. At least if they're separated, it's easier to be amicable.

Try harder at what? If a relationship is over, it's over. Why should people have to stay in a stale relationship just because they're married? I hate the 'they didn't try hard enough' criticism, if they weren't happy why would you begrudge them their happiness just so marriage stats can stay happy looking? I really doubt that most divorcees just woke up one morning and thought 'well, that's enough of that then'.

 

[Kargathia]

Every time those statistics pop up I'm pretty damn happy divorce is an option. It may not look nice on a graph, but everything is better than that special kind of warzone caused by an unhappily married couple.

 

[Erana]

Every time I those statistics pop up I'm pretty damn happy divorce is an option. It may not look nice on a graph, but everything is better than that special kind of warzone caused by an unhappily married couple.

Yeah, this is kind of how I feel.
I mean, if divorce wasn't a real option for my mother... oh god everything would be aweful forever.

 

[aestu]

But seriously- Why is the rate of divorce so high?

No-fault divorce and women almost always getting full custody and a big slice of their former husband's assets means that almost all divorces are initiated by women who have suffered no misconduct.

Greedy and immature women have an incentive to break up marriages for personal gain.
Such is why most divorces occur. It's that simple.

 

[Macgyvercas]

Mostly because I like an excuse to suit up

REAL men don't need an excuse, Daystar! Come on, I'd expect you to know that XD

 

[aestu]

Actually, anyone I've ever met whose parents had a divorce when they were young said it was like a weight being lifted. They hated the fighting and the tension, kids are very perceptive. If two people are in a toxic relationship

All of this is strawman and nonsense.

First, you're claiming there was "fighting" or a "toxic relatioship". In reality, most divorces are no-fault - at the whim of one party (almost always the wife).

Second, dealing with conflict is part of life. If parents cannot work out their conflict, divorce is not the answer, growing the eff up is. Would you say parents should be able to abandon their children when they decide they can't see eye-to-eye?

Third, children who grow up short a parent are missing something. It is through parents that children first learn about human nature. All sons see all women through the lens of their mothers, and all daughters see all men through the lens of their fathers. Women who have abusive fathers and men who have abusive mothers have a generally poor outlook. By the same token, being down a parent is a terrible thing for any child.

Every child has the right to his parents. To rationalize separating a child from one of his parents, or depriving him of a complete household, is selfish. Children need stability more than anything else in their lives, and divorce deprives them of that.

 

[aestu]

my opinion: a relationship takes work, couples argue, it happens even though some people try as hard as possible to look perfect to outsiders.
basically a relationship will last as long as the ammount of effort put into it.

Basically this. And if people can't do that, that's a failing of personal character.

The problem is, wives that are shallow and greedy are now incentivized by feminist-motivated legislation to break up families for their own personal gain, and to use the children to cause their former spouse suffering.

 

[aestu]

But good relationships should be effortless.

Wrong. Good relationships take work. Life is hard. People are not perfect. Even good people have differences of opinions and matters of preference and ego.

No one could maintain a friendship, much less a marriage, if they think the relationship is somehow flawed if ever the two parties come into disagreement.

What makes a mature individual is overcoming conflict and disagreement - not breaking up the relationship should a cloud appear in the sky.

My folks have been married for decades and they rarely argue and state how effortless the relationship has been. That's a real relationship

Another anecdote? Cute.

But it's a strawman - no. Everything is easy when there is no challenge. Expecting life to be easy is unreasonable. By corrolary, when you were a child, should your parents have been free to abandon you if ever they felt somehow unhappy with you as a child?

why force a square into a circular hole?

Because we, as human beings, are not neatly manufactured pegs. We have our rough edges, our flaws that offend and annoy everyone, we are not perfect. And maturity - and marriage - reflect that.

 

[burningdragoon]

my opinion: a relationship takes work, couples argue, it happens even though some people try as hard as possible to look perfect to outsiders.
basically a relationship will last as long as the ammount of effort put into it.

But good relationships should be effortless. My folks have been married for decades and they rarely argue and state how effortless the relationship has been. That's a real relationship; why force a square into a circular hole?

Because when you vow to fit that square peg into a round hole, you don't stop until you do. Like Thunderdome... or something, I don't really know where I was going with that.

So yeah, it's pretty silly to say: Okay, so you're in this relationship, good for you. And you want to get married? Awesome. If that turns out to be the wrong decision, well too fucking bad you're stuck forever.

 

[aestu]

So yeah, it's pretty silly to say: Okay, so you're in this relationship, good for you. And you want to get married? Awesome. If that turns out to be the wrong decision, well too fucking bad you're stuck forever.

So would you say that parents should be able to abandon their children when they become inconvenient?

Or if having a child turns out to be the wrong decision, well too fucking bad you're stuck forever...?

What about crime? Should criminals receive full guaranteed pardon if they express remorse? Or what about buying a product, or any other sort of legal agreement?

Should you be able to return anything you ever bought to a store, ever, or retroactively cancel any business contract, because it turned out to be the wrong decision?

I wish I didn't buy this keyboard three years ago. Can I return it for a full refund?
I wish I didn't buy this house ten years ago. It turned out to be the wrong decision! Can I undo that? Or am I stuck with this house?

Your premise is that people should not have to live with their decisions. As you can see, that's a pretty unreasonable premise.

 

[Screamarie]

I actually heard a rather interesting explaination once.

They say it's because nowadays, couples are moving in together BEFORE they get married. So when said couples actually DO get married, there isn't really any immediate change. There's no period of discovering anything new about each other, since that's already been covered when they moved in together. It creates an environment of stagnation before the marriage even begins.

Not necessarily the ONLY reason the divorce rate is so high, but something to consider.

I've also read in a textbook (which one I can't remember, it was for a sociology class I believe), that it is believe that couples that move in together have a high rate of divore because at least one party never really wanted to commit in the first, hence why they tried moving in together instead of getting married. Don't know how true it is, but like you said, something to consider.

I just think that people aren't really understanding the transition of the times. You know our moms and dads got married so young cause they were raised by a generation that did so as well and so did the generation before them. So our moms and dads expect us to get married young too. Thing is though that things have been changing and no one is making note of it.

Once upon a time you got married and you weren't going to be with them but for what...? 20 years? Maybe 30 if you're just really lucky or really healthy? You didn't reach your 80s once upon a time. You had to marry young or else you literally wouldn't have time to birth and raise children....nowadays, people often live to a 100...and eighty years is a LONG time to spend with someone.

Of course I can't prove this, it's all just a hypothesis, and I'm certainly not putting it out to be the ONLY reason. I just think we're not adapting to the times well. Our great, great grandparents got married young and they've been passing that down to us and yet we're not realizing that, while yes you can die at any moment, odds are WAY more in your favor than they were for Great, Great Grandmother Tuberculosis. When our parents and grandparents see us at 22 and not married they feel we'er running out of time, and because they're our elders we take that to heart and believe them when really we're just starting.

 

[Kargathia]

Actually, anyone I've ever met whose parents had a divorce when they were young said it was like a weight being lifted. They hated the fighting and the tension, kids are very perceptive. If two people are in a toxic relationship

All of this is strawman and nonsense.

First, you're claiming there was "fighting" or a "toxic relatioship". In reality, most divorces are no-fault - at the whim of one party (almost always the wife).

Second, dealing with conflict is part of life. If parents cannot work out their conflict, divorce is not the answer, growing the eff up is. Would you say parents should be able to abandon their children when they decide they can't see eye-to-eye?

Third, children who grow up short a parent are missing something. It is through parents that children first learn about human nature. All sons see all women through the lens of their mothers, and all daughters see all men through the lens of their fathers. Women who have abusive fathers and men who have abusive mothers have a generally poor outlook. By the same token, being down a parent is a terrible thing for any child.

Every child has the right to his parents. To rationalize separating a child from one of his parents, or depriving him of a complete household, is selfish. Children need stability more than anything else in their lives, and divorce deprives them of that.

Ahhh, we meet again. How delightful.

Let's see what we have here this time... Insults, jumping to conclusions, wrong interpretation, laughably naive world-view, convenient ignorance, actual sense, a bit of exaggeration, and once more a shining example of naivity. This should be good.

First of all, he did not name any specific examples, merely stated that in his experience the majority of people who had their parents divorce were happy about it. Unless he is outright lying, you have no grounds whatsoever to call "nonsense", even if your following statement was correct - which it is not.

As to the majority of divorces being no-fault; this is correct, but where you went wrong is that this does not prohibit a toxic relationship. A spouse does not have to be unfaithful, abusive, doubly married, or in any other way massively at fault for the marriage to be bad.
I'm also quite baffled as to why it deserves special attention that a relationship can be ended at the whim of only one party. It's not a democracy, it's a relationship. You know, one of these things we don't vote on.

There certainly might be cases where "try harder" could be apt, but quite frankly I find your assumption that any conflict can be resolved by "growing the eff up" rather... amusing. Of course, my experiences with women hiding from abusive husbands might ever so slightly have tainted my opinions here.

And with that we arrive at the only portion of your post that made actual sense. Your reasoning is overly generalised, and mildly inaccurate, but on the whole it's correct that an abusive or absent parent will be a bad thing for a child.
However, stating that missing a parent is "a terrible thing" is an exaggeration. It certainly is not perfect, but compared to an abusive parent - or even a bad marriage - it will be a significant improvement. And that is before we consider that little-known option called "shared custody".

And to equally summarise, and reply to your last paragraph: stability is certainly a good thing if you want to raise your kid, but avoiding the kind of downright toxic and detrimental environment a bad marriage can become will easily trump that.

 

[burningdragoon]

So yeah, it's pretty silly to say: Okay, so you're in this relationship, good for you. And you want to get married? Awesome. If that turns out to be the wrong decision, well too fucking bad you're stuck forever.

So would you say that parents should be able to abandon their children when they become inconvenient?



I didn't say that, did I? (I didn't)


Or if having a child turns out to be the wrong decision, well too fucking bad you're stuck forever...?


I didn't say that (or anything like this stuff, but I'll humor you and myself, a more important goal)

I don't know, nor care, what would make having a child a "wrong" decision, but if it did turn out to be the case, then I wouldn't have an issue with, oh I don't know, adoption.


What about crime? Should criminals receive full guaranteed pardon if they express remorse?


No, next question. (and if you want to elaborate on how that's related, feel free)


Or what about buying a product, or any other sort of legal agreement?

Should you be able to return anything you ever bought to a store, ever, or retroactively cancel any business contract, because it turned out to be the wrong decision?

I wish I didn't buy this keyboard three years ago. Can I return it for a full refund?
I wish I didn't buy this house ten years ago. It turned out to be the wrong decision! Can I undo that? Or am I stuck with this house?


Just so you know, I wouldn't call getting divorced "returning my wife to the store" because she wouldn't be an product, she would be another person. So I (again) don't really see the connection.

That being said, if buy a house, and later decided I don't want, I'd say it's reasonable to, you know, move. Are you saying that once you buy a house you have to live there forever?


Your premise is that people should not have to live with their decisions. As you can see, that's a pretty unreasonable premise.

No, my premise is that not every decision is the correct one, and where appropriate that decision should be able to be corrected. "Appropriate" and "corrected" are purposely undefined and not going to have the same definition for every situation. My position that "divorce should be an option" says nothing about how I feel about literally any other situation.

 

[Kargathia]

Or be smart and don't vow to go with someone who clearly isn't a good match...
Clearly if things change after marriage then the people didn't know each other well enough before getting married.

True, but this only applies for those marriages that end after less than a year or so. Even considering the notion you can accurately predict what kind of person both you and your partner have become in twenty years time is ridiculous.

Rushing into a marriage is stupid, but seriously expecting all couples to still like each other the rest of their lives is naive.