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My point is, quite simply, what I said. It is possible that you could be happier and more fulfilled if you had chosen someone else.
Of course you could live without them, that is ridiculous.
I don't think that anyone that has truly been in love and has built a life with that love would agree with you. I'll just leave it at that. You think I'm ridiculous - I think you like to nitpick, push people's buttons, and find things to disagree with. That's fine. I just don't feel like taking part anymore.
So, it is possible that, since everything would have been different, it is possible that it could have been better?
Always looking for something better is a recipe for being miserable. I live in a nice neighborhood. It suits me perfectly. Is my house the absolute best house I could possibly live in? No. I'm sure I could find a better one -- but it's mine, and I like it. I like my neighbors. I like my daughter's school. I like the trees. I look around often and think, how nice -- I'm glad I live here. If I were constantly thinking about where I could live and what life could be like somewhere else, I wouldn't appreciate what I had.
This article was getting at that. If I were constantly on the look out for someone "better" than my wife, I wouldn't enjoy her for who she is.
Actually - I completely disagree with you. The article expresses what a good marriage should be at a fundamental level. It's not necessarily "exciting" - although it can be a times. It's not necessarily glamorous, lustful 100% of the time, blissful at all times. It's something more real and lasting than that. It's someone lying next to you at night. It's someone that knows you inside and out - so you can be who you are with out worrying about what they will think of you. It's someone that needs you. If anything - I think one of the reasons people jump into marriage too quickly or divorce at the drop of the hat is because of a lack of understanding of what marriage is at it's core. It think the article was wonderful.
That's all great, but more often than not, that's now how it works out.
I'm really not against marriage. I'm just against all of bull suggesting that is doesn't usually fail. It is promoted as the end all of happiness, but in fact it ruins lives every day, and often the lives of innocent children.
I also think... correction, know, that it is generally an arrangement that is rigged against men.
That's all great, but more often than not, that's now how it works out.
I'm really not against marriage. I'm just against all of bull suggesting that is doesn't usually fail. It is promoted as the end all of happiness, but in fact it ruins lives every day, and often the lives of innocent children.
I also think... correction, know, that it is generally an arrangement that is rigged against men.
Well, that's how it worked out for me. I'm sorry it didn't work out for you.
My husband and many other men would disagree with you but that probably doesn't matter.
Long term marriages do happen. Who's to say if they are genuinely "happy", or even healthy?
I personally witnessed a couple who were devoted to each other for over 60 years...my great aunt and uncle. They were beyond "in love" - they literally adored each other. To see them together would make your heart melt.
The key ingredient in their relationship seemed to be kindness.
However, their happiness had come at a price. These two were so "in love" that even their own children had been excluded. As adults their offspring were distant and largely uninvolved, mainly because they had been pretty much ignored and excluded all their lives by their own parents.
Longetivity is also no guarantee of quality. The rise in grey divorce is telling us that.
I sincerely believe that marriage as we know it, is doomed. It is a hangover from a more traditional time when it made all kinds of sense to mate for life - people died when they were 40 back then.
Now we all live into our 80s it seems laughable to imagine being committed to one other person for 60 plus years. We all have so much other stuff in our lives which can interfere. Instead of chopping the wood and plucking the chickens, we are surfing the net and going to pilates. It's a completely different society now, and our lifestyles are such that we don't need to bond together to survive like they did even 100 years ago.
Everyone needs to just chill out about marriage. Let everyone marry, why not? The institution is going to wither away to a quaint old memory if we don't allow everyone free access to it. Heck, where I live, being married is already viewed as an exception to the rule as most people don't bother. You assume couples are unmarried here.
The world hasn't ended, the schools aren't full of delinquent offspring. There is no discernable difference a marriage certificate makes to the happiness of couples. In fact the more "undefined" the relationship is, the happier everyone seems. There is a security in believing (perhaps falsely) you can "just walk out the door" which seems to actually encourage love and trust and commitment.
That's all great, but more often than not, that's now how it works out.
I'm really not against marriage. I'm just against all of bull suggesting that is doesn't usually fail. It is promoted as the end all of happiness, but in fact it ruins lives every day, and often the lives of innocent children.
I also think... correction, know, that it is generally an arrangement that is rigged against men.
And studies actually bear this out -- the single biggest predictor of happiness is the quality of one's bond to one's mate. Marriage to the right person, a person who is just as committed to the success of the relationship as you are, is an incredibly rich source of happiness.
If you check on the way that fillihok writes, you'll see that his posts are generally the reason why most of failed marriages are indeed failures in today's world. He speaks the truth, there isn't a "specific person that you can only bond with", but exactly the way and attitude that he displays is the result of social engineering that I'm speaking about. Don't miss out something, ditch everything, roll over it, go after something that might be better. People should see marriage as a peaceful harbor, not a chance to better their lives or to strive for something greater. Believe it or not, this is even more prevalent among women (not seeing it in the way I bolded it), which is why I simply stopped dating. It's a waste of time and money if you don't seek for random sex with someone you won't even care because you see they date you just to show you to their friends, without bothering much about relationship itself.
I don't intend to be someone's backup plan once they get tired doing stupid things and when they get older. Marriage is supposed to be about starting a family and ensuring a peaceful harbor for you, your spouse and eventual children that you should strive for. If children don't happen to be the part of it, tough luck, you should do your best.
Once again, it's about that peaceful harbor that you should live in. Today's marriage simply isn't because of that, at least in heads of many folks, which is why this whole concept is outdated. They cannot even think of missing out on something. They are just too good to miss on something in their lives, and they have children usually because of their relativistic view of life, they relativize everything, even concept of god is to be ridiculed without ever thinking about it - but the death is unavoidable and they are scared of death, which is why they seek for someone to have children because deep down within them they hope that they'll be the ones living inside of lives of their children, thus they'll cheat the death itself and live forever. Just that one child, make it two just in case of a traffic accident, to make them safe within their souls... and everything else it irrelevant, it's only about personal fulfillment. Someone gave it a name - self-entitlement culture.
To make it more hilarious, this very concept that the author describes is the ideal that medieval times gave us. New age invented "free love" and "sexual revolution". I find it ironic that in latest time the same people who bashed marriage decided to go after medieval idea, a concept that was abandoned and then ridiculed with generations that came out of broken marriages and destroyed homes. People are simply mistrusting to each other, and only on top of that comes the legal aspect and all the risks that it brings.
Last edited by nald; 02-16-2013 at 02:16 PM..
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