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For the Married Guys (And the Guys Who Have Been Married)
2012 Dec 28, 2:55am 175,912 views 460 comments
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121212
@
2012 Dec 28, 3:02am
Do not get married.
You dont need a piece of paper to prove your love.
If you live together and dont need the tax advantage marriage is unnecessary and a strain on your relationship.
You have to work harder without a marriage licence to stay together. Getting married will do you no favors in that department.
If you get married for TAX PURPOSES ONLY get a Prenuptial agreement, especially in California.
100% PRE-NUP
BayArea
@
2012 Dec 28, 3:08am
Thank you for the reply.
This will be more effective if everyone who responds lists their marital status and number of years in that status.
100% PRE-NUP
At what point is the liquid/asset gap large enough for the pre-nup to make sense? Just as an example, say the following:
Man: $100,000 cash in the bank. Owns a $500,000 house (still owes $350,000 on the loan and the house is valued at $300,000 today).
Woman: $150K in school loans, $0 in the bank.
Pre-Nup? lol
You have to work harder without a marriage licence to stay together. Getting married will do you no favors in that department.
With all due respect, that's a bit of a contradiction, isn't it?
Ceffer
@
2012 Dec 28, 3:19am
You are asking for guarantees and warranties on the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
Euphoric love is basically a biologic trap getting individuals to commit for the purposes of viable reproduction. Sociologists have stated that some humans are monogamous, but a good portion are "serially monogamous".
Nature's demand is getting the rug rats to a reasonable age alive, thus the seven year itch.
Women's marketable asset is their reproductive capability, which diminishes as they get older. Vulnerability during pregnancy, birth and child infancy leads them to demand resources and commitment in exchange for sex. Men have to purchase this asset since they cannot reproduce.
After that, relationship viability would rely on companionship potential outside of the biologic contract.
One wag stated that men marry because they think their wives will never change, but they do. Women marry because they think their husbands will change, but they don't.
Whether you have a marriage that lasts or not depends on whether you can remain good friends with your spouse through the historical and biological changes and phases of your relationship. The hormones won't last, nor should you expect them to.
Whether you can remain friends is as unpredictable as anything else, but marriage does tend to be good for the health of men and pooling of tasks and resources has obvious advantages, along with social acceptance and growing of a family. Must be why people keep trying over and over.
Issues of religion are purely personal and depend on individual flexibility.
When you are blinded by hormones and "love", you may tend to underestimate the impact of finances or beliefs. Money is the prime mover of 80 percent of break ups, and what might appear as a small road bump when the hormones are raging will grow into a festering wound once the hormones dry up.
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Hi guys,
As the old adage states, "Can't live with them, can't live without them."
For the guys that are married now or have been married, I'm wondering what your experience has been and if you could give a newly engaged man (hypothetical to me since I am not engaged) any piece of advise or wisdom, what would it be?
I love my GF, but for a few minutes I'm going to zoom out and look at things from a more technical, statistical, and less emotional point of view.
To be honest, I am a bit discouraged at just how many people I know who don't seem to be too happy in their marriages. It always seems to be the same story. Things started off great. There was excitement, adventure, strong physical and emotional chemistry. Then 2-3yrs into it, those feels started to fade. Some couples moved on to the next phase of their lives and had some glue, er I mean kids which kept things fresh and exciting.
I saw a plot in the newspaper several years back that showed divorce statistics as a function of time. There is a spike early on in the marriage (first couple of years), then one at 7 years (7-year itch), and one at about year 18-20 (when the glue is all grown up). If you make it past that, you are fairly safe (not necessarily happy, but likelihood of divorce is low). Some of that is influenced by the fact that you don't have the same options at 45 or 50 as you do at 25 or 30. Sucks, but that's the truth.
I recall reading a book by psycologist Scott Peck that studied the term "Love." He argues that 100% of relationships fall out of love, usually pretty early on in the first few years. The feeling of love is not true love then. The conscious decision to love someone once you lose the "in love" feeling is what real love is all about.
Regarding statistics, 50% of couples who get married in this country wind up in divorce (To be fair, some of those aren't 1st marriages so that 50% number isn't quite as bad as it seems - The reason is that 2nd marriages have a higher divorce rate than 1st marriages and 3rd marriages have a higher divorce rate than 2nd marriages). Moving on, if 50% of couples get divorced, then 50% of couples don't get divorced. Surely those 50% that remain together aren't all happy marriages? So then let's say that half of the marriages that stay together are happy. That means that 25% of couples getting married in the first place remain happy, lol. I really don't like the odds here!
But anytime you get into this debate, you have to get into the alternative, being alone into older age. As much as I see my folks fight and bicker, I tend to think it's better than the alternative (at least for the level they fight and bicker).
A while back Patrick argued that the average person remains in their purchased home for no more than 6-7 years. He said, you might think you are different, but statistically you are not. Same thing goes for divorce. Nobody goes into marriage thinking they will get a divorce. But statistically, 1 in 2 people do in the USA.
What do you guys think?
As a side note, I am really curious about the following. What is the divorce rate assuming the following:
Both Members are devout Catholic ?
Both Members are devout Christian ?
Both Members are devout Muslim ?
Both Members are Atheist ?
Members don't share religious beliefs ?