Lots of people marrying for the wrong reasons/not ready

[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.

Not really. If you get married at around ~28, you won't actually change that much. Just ask your parents if they feel different to how they did 20 years ago. If they were mature when they were younger, then they won't have changed much whatsoever. People don't keep on changing as much as they did in their teenage years throughout the rest of their life. Someone who was mature and easy going at 28 isn't going to be a violent workaholic at 50.

Changes are certainly a lot more drastic in your teenage years, and you - probably - won't have made a heel face turn somewhere along the way, but "the rest of your life" really is quite a while, and that's before all the annoying biological road bumps at various intervals are considered. (eg. that whole 7-year-relationship-thingie, and the good ol' midlife crisis)

Side note: suggesting that I ask my parents about this is unintentionally quite hilarious.

 

[Ziame]

Because we live in a world where you dont fix anything - you discard it. People dont work their problems out, they just run away from them.

I am with my GF for six years now, granted - we're not married - but it never occurred to me that I could dump her because of our differences! FFS you just dont do that. If you have a problem, talk about it, figure it out.

It's easier to divorce than to mend relations. USA is the wealthiest nation on Earth - they are the biggest consumptionists we have - thus why they discard broken things easier.

I bet that the poorer the country, the less divorces there are - because the poorer you are, the more you scavenge and the less you expect.

Marriage aint supposed to be perfect. It's life we're talking about after all.

 

[Quiet Stranger]

I do think it's because people don't bother to really get to know one another better nowadays.

I hope when I find the girl I want to marry that she feels the same way and we stay together forever (well death anyways) I'd hate to have to go through a divorce and feel awful and bleh bleh bleh

 

[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.

Not really. If you get married at around ~28, you won't actually change that much. Just ask your parents if they feel different to how they did 20 years ago. If they were mature when they were younger, then they won't have changed much whatsoever. People don't keep on changing as much as they did in their teenage years throughout the rest of their life. Someone who was mature and easy going at 28 isn't going to be a violent workaholic at 50.

Changes are certainly a lot more drastical in your teenage years, and you - probably - won't have made a heel face turn somewhere along the way, but "the rest of your life" really is quite a while, and that's before all the annoying biological road bumps at various intervals are considered. (eg. That whole 7-year-relationship-thingie, and the good ol' midlife crisis)

Working with a varied age group, I can say that people don't really change much from how they were in their mid 20's. Maybe some-things become more emphasised but that's about it.

And yet, do you think that people can be honestly expected to always make the right long-term decision?

 

[Fluffythepoo]

If church and state were separate this wouldn't be a problem.. but they arent

 

[aestu]

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.

An anecdote is an example. It is a flawed example because it is hard to verify, and the burden of proof lays with party making positive contention. Thus anecdotes are typically excluded from serious discussion.

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.

What defines a "toxic relationship"?
What are the parameters for defining a relationship as "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.

Wrong. Dating is a relationship. Marriage is a contract, recognized by law, that affords the two parties specific rights, privileges and responsibility. And one cannot just rip up a contract when one feels like it (much less expect to continue to reap the rewards from said contract in the form of financial support).

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.

Since we agree that most divorces are at-will and no-fault, your "experience" is irrelevant.

Your talk of your experience is sexist, because you yourself say your experience is entirely with one gender subject to the mistreatment of the other - but you have no experience with, nor appear to even consider, the mistreatment many men receive from their wives...

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".

This is a false duality. Especially since most fathers robbed of their children by divorce courts - the overwhelming majority - are not abusive.

So again, you are being sexist and hateful towards men. You are using the misdeeds of a few men, as a means to generalize about all men who have dealt with the divorce system with a broad brush.

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.

So you say. Do you have evidence?

Because I certainly do. Basically all societies have developed marriage in some form. Basically all societies consider it an insult to be called a bastard. In fact many cultures have a hand gesture that literally means to call someone a bastard (such as the Latino mannerism of displaying the palm with five fingers extended). In short, it is generally accepted that coming from a broken house is a disgrace because of how it reflects on the parents and how they raised their child, and the attitude to the contrary is at odds with the general human experience.

 

[Snowbell]

I worry that I'll never marry for that exact reason; divorce is so easy these days that it's become increasingly popular, and what's the point if you're just going to split up a few years later :|

 

[aestu]

There a 6 - 7 billion people on the planet.

So what? Would it make a difference if there were 100 million? If there were 100 billion? Either way it's more people than you could possibly meet in your lifetime.

If things are working out you are not morally obliged to stay with them.

You're talking as if the relationship under examination was as narrow as dating.

But it isn't...marriage involves children, a house, an estate, some sort of division of labor...there are stakes bigger than one person's whims...

People are different so why put your relational future solely on one person if it's not going well?

Because, this just in: "It" is not all about you.

It's this desperation that exhausts people, resulting in divorce, because they were trying to fix something that was never broken. If people don't get on, then they are different and should move on;

And yet somehow the divorce rate was marginal until very recently. Clearly, these problems didn't "exhaust people" "resulting in divorce", and the system did not become "broken" until recently.

it's not some personal failure to admit differences. accept them and move on.

So do we mean that we move on until we find someone with whom we have no differences?
Good luck man - keep chasing that rainbow.

I mean, some people definitely do find their soulmate. But most people don't, any more than most people go from "rags to riches".

Accepting differences means learning to live with them. Developing the humility to know that you, too, are flawed, and you must be as patient with others as they must be with you. It does not mean taking your ball and moving out (or kicking your husband out of his own house) because you decided you didn't like something about someone at a certain time.

 

[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.

Not really. If you get married at around ~28, you won't actually change that much. Just ask your parents if they feel different to how they did 20 years ago. If they were mature when they were younger, then they won't have changed much whatsoever. People don't keep on changing as much as they did in their teenage years throughout the rest of their life. Someone who was mature and easy going at 28 isn't going to be a violent workaholic at 50.

Changes are certainly a lot more drastical in your teenage years, and you - probably - won't have made a heel face turn somewhere along the way, but "the rest of your life" really is quite a while, and that's before all the annoying biological road bumps at various intervals are considered. (eg. That whole 7-year-relationship-thingie, and the good ol' midlife crisis)

Working with a varied age group, I can say that people don't really change much from how they were in their mid 20's. Maybe some-things become more emphasised but that's about it.

And yet, do you think that people can be honestly expected to always make the right long-term decision?

No but that's because of people's own stupidity. If they are immature when they get married, then they will probably not have good foresight, but that's to do with them being immature rather then people inherently changing after the reach age "x".

Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying that one automatically and arbitrarily changes upon reaching a certain age (ok, except puberty, but that's slightly irrelevant here), merely that for a decision as long-term and important as a marriage it is a good thing there is the option to declare the whole thing a mistake, and move on.

 

[Kargathia]

Spoiler

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.

An anecdote is an example. It is a flawed example because it is hard to verify, and the burden of proof lays with party making positive contention. Thus anecdotes are typically excluded from serious discussion.

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.

What defines a "toxic relationship"?
What are the parameters for defining a relationship as "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.

Wrong. Dating is a relationship. Marriage is a contract, recognized by law, that affords the two parties specific rights, privileges and responsibility. And one cannot just rip up a contract when one feels like it (much less expect to continue to reap the rewards from said contract in the form of financial support).

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.

Since we agree that most divorces are at-will and no-fault, your "experience" is irrelevant.

Your talk of your experience is sexist, because you yourself say your experience is entirely with one gender subject to the mistreatment of the other - but you have no experience with, nor appear to even consider, the mistreatment many men receive from their wives...

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".

This is a false duality. Especially since most fathers robbed of their children by divorce courts - the overwhelming majority - are not abusive.

So again, you are being sexist and hateful towards men. You are using the misdeeds of a few men, as a means to generalize about all men who have dealt with the divorce system with a broad brush.

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.

So you say. Do you have evidence?

Because I certainly do. Basically all societies have developed marriage in some form. Basically all societies consider it an insult to be called a bastard. In fact many cultures have a hand gesture that literally means to call someone a bastard (such as the Latino mannerism of displaying the palm with five fingers extended). In short, it is generally accepted that coming from a broken house is a disgrace because of how it reflects on the parents and how they raised their child, and the attitude to the contrary is at odds with the general human experience.

Whereas anecdotal evidence indeed does not hold the same weight as factual evidence, declaring him a liar for it not only squarely places the burden of proof on your shoulders, it also diminishes your own standing in the debate.

There rightly are no defined parameters for when a marriage is "bad". This is entirely up to the judgement of the couple. Trying to define a tipping point for when a marriage should be considered "bad", "toxic", "unsalvageable", or whatever other word you prefer, is irrelevant to this discussion. The mere existence of such a state is justification for the concept of divorce.

Laws regarding marriage have at times been shamefully late in updating, but as of right now every first-world country considers marriage to be a material contract. You're not entitled to sex with, or even the presence of your partner.
You're correct, however, that all specific rights, privileges, and responsibilities taken on by the spouses when they entered the marriage cannot be dissolved on a whim. (Religious vows don't count). Divorces, however, can be requested by only one partner. It just tends to involve a lot more hassle.

Your accusations of sexism are also, once again, unfounded, and completely irrelevant. I did not state only women were victim to spousal abuse, nor does it even matter which spouse is the abusive one.

The same thing goes for your next accusation (this time of false duality). I never specified any gender-based distinction, nor did I even remotely imply that missing a parent is a good thing - merely that it certainly can be an improvement.

Your so-called "evidence" also comes in the form of wild conjecture, coupled with reliance on badly interpreted social stigma. The fact alone you are considering a social stigma to be worthy evidence is laughable.
If your "theory" about stigma surrounding bastards was correct, how is it that people whose mother died in childbirth aren't referred to as bastards? They too have never known one of their parents.

And just to satisfy your desire for evidence I'll link this [http://www.hiddenhurt.co.uk/domestic_violence_stories.html] - even though technically I only need a single example of a case where divorce would be decidedly better than lacking a parent.

 

[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.

Not really. If you get married at around ~28, you won't actually change that much. Just ask your parents if they feel different to how they did 20 years ago. If they were mature when they were younger, then they won't have changed much whatsoever. People don't keep on changing as much as they did in their teenage years throughout the rest of their life. Someone who was mature and easy going at 28 isn't going to be a violent workaholic at 50.

Changes are certainly a lot more drastical in your teenage years, and you - probably - won't have made a heel face turn somewhere along the way, but "the rest of your life" really is quite a while, and that's before all the annoying biological road bumps at various intervals are considered. (eg. That whole 7-year-relationship-thingie, and the good ol' midlife crisis)

Working with a varied age group, I can say that people don't really change much from how they were in their mid 20's. Maybe some-things become more emphasised but that's about it.

And yet, do you think that people can be honestly expected to always make the right long-term decision?

No but that's because of people's own stupidity. If they are immature when they get married, then they will probably not have good foresight, but that's to do with them being immature rather then people inherently changing after the reach age "x".

Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying that one automatically and arbitrarily changes upon reaching a certain age (ok, except puberty, but that's slightly irrelevant here), merely that for a decision as long-term and important as a marriage it is a good thing there is the option to declare the whole thing a mistake, and move on.

Certainly. I can't see the point in trying to "stick it out" when there is no need to do so. It seems odd that people would change themselves for someone else when surely that's a sign that they don't mix well to begin with...

Self-deception, social pressures, loneliness, and hormones are a lovely combination. And it's not even like we don't make bad decisions without those involved.

P.S: double post, because otherwise the whole thing would get pretty unwieldy.

 

[aestu]

Whereas anecdotal evidence indeed does not hold the same weight as factual evidence

First off, you're not using the word "whereas" properly. "Whereas" is used only in very formal writing in general address. As you are addressing your point to me, and this is a discussion not an address, the word "whereas" is not appropriate.

We see feminists do this a lot, they try to use what they see as "scholarly" language to appear "educated", but only prove their own ignorance of the basics of English and logic.

declaring him a liar for it not only squarely places the burden of proof on your shoulders, it also diminishes your own standing in the debate.

Uh. No. Burden of proof always lays with the party making the positive contention. Alleging that a claim lacks proof (or was simply made up) does not shift that burden of proof away from the person who made the claim.

Basically, your claim here boils down to, "you disagree with me so you're wrong".

Failing to understand that the burden of proof ALWAYS lays with party making positive contention betrays a lack of understanding of the basics of debate.

There rightly are no defined parameters for when a marriage is "bad". This is entirely up to the judgement of the couple.

Both members of the couple, or only one...?

Trying to define a tipping point for when a marriage should be considered "bad", "toxic", "unsalvageable", or whatever other word you prefer, is irrelevant to this discussion. The mere existence of such a state is justification for divorce.

You can't use a term to define an argument (the conditions under which a marriage should be considered flawed and unsalvageable) then claim the meaning of those terms don't matter.

If the terms you're using to support your position mean nothing, then your entire argument is void.

Laws regarding marriage have at times been shamefully late in updating

By whose standards?

but as of right now every first-world country considers marriage to be a material contract. You're not entitled to sex with, or even the presence of your partner.

I said nothing about sex. I talked about marriage as a material contract.

You're correct, however, that all specific rights, privileges, and responsibilities taken on by the spouses when they entered the marriage cannot be dissolved on a whim. (Religious vows don't count). Divorces, however, can be requested by only one partner. It just tends to involve a lot more hassle.

Actually, no fault-divorce means that, in fact, a marriage CAN be broken up on a whim.

Your accusations of sexism are also, once again, unfounded, and completely irrelevant. I did not state only women were victim to spousal abuse, nor does it even matter which spouse is the abusive one. The same thing goes for your next accusation (this time of false duality). I never specified any gender-based distinction, nor did I even remotely imply that missing a parent is a good thing - merely that it certainly can be an improvement.

But you did - your claims were exclusively about men abusing women, even though the claim was not relevant because the matter in question was no-fault divorce.

So why make an irrelevant point, about only one gender?

Your so-called "evidence" also comes in the form of wild conjecture, coupled with reliance on badly interpreted social stigma. The fact alone you are considering a social stigma to be worthy evidence is laughable.

Stigma is perfectly valid "evidence" in the fields of sociology and anthropology. Stigmas serve useful purposes in society - they are the most basic meter of a society's values.

And by studying common stigmas in discrete human societies, we can learn quite a bit about human nature, which is the point of anthropology.

Just a piece of evidence - or an entire field of study - doesn't favor your political bias, doesn't invalidate that evidence or study.

If your "theory" about stigma surrounding bastards was correct, how is it that people whose mother died in childbirth aren't referred to as bastards? They too have never known one of their parents.

That is a very good question. And the answer, perhaps, betrays something about human nature.

And just to satisfy your desire for evidence I'll link this [http://www.hiddenhurt.co.uk/domestic_violence_stories.html] - even though technically I only need a single example of a case where divorce would be decidedly better than lacking a parent.

Irrelevant. Most divorces are no-fault and perpetrated by women.

You might as well argue for decriminalizing murder on the basis of justifiable homicides.