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I think you should have seen the signs(clingy, etc.), even with the "act".....
We had a few squabbles but I was told that NO relationship is without them. One of my best friends in college appeared to have a squabble-free relationship, but when I questioned him about it, his response was "oh, you don't see us in private...". I didn't mind squabbling if it was what had to happen to iron out any misconceptions or potential problems. However, I do insist upon "one and done"... as in, this particular problem never happens again once it is talked through and a satisfactory resolution is reached.
I didn't mind her being clingy. I like women like that. I've never cared for the idea of marrying someone only to spend the majority of your time away from that person. What's the point of being married if that's going to be your life?
She confessed to me at the three-year mark that it had been an act. That didn't surprise me, as it was the only logical answer. I had actually taken her to task for that in the past - as in "were you putting on an act? Were you misrepresenting yourself to deceive me into marrying you?"... and she always denied it until the following two conditions were met: 1) it was no longer deniable, 2) she finally realized that it was a lost cause, trying to get me to love her the way she really was.
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Originally Posted by scottkuzminski
A monogamous relationship, even without marriage, is hell on earth if you are incompatico.....
Yeah, but it's far easier to dissolve in such a case. This is one reason why marriage is going out of style. People are no longer as compatible as they used to be, on the whole. There is a much wider divergence in worldview and ideology among humans now compared to the way things used to be even two generations ago. This is one of the consequences of "liberation". We're free to be who we want to be with minimal to no societal pressure to conform to anything, but in so doing we make ourselves entirely compatible with pretty much nobody.
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Originally Posted by Nick538
Marriages end because divorce is too easy to get and because we have become a nation of spoiled, self-centered, over entitled, whiny narcissists.
Who would get married if in so doing he/she KNEW that the situation would soon become one of having to give up who you are and what you want out of life, in order to keep the marriage "happy"?
I'll give you a for-instance. I am a performing musician. I enjoy being a performing musician. Back in the day when I was married to my ex, I made most of my money teaching music lessons, but I was still a musician. In the beginning, she thought it was awesome that I had my own business and could make a living as a musician. She said she wanted to do it with me. Heck, 4 weeks into our dating relationship, she drove a 400-mile round trip just to sing three songs with me at a wedding I was doing! Now how was I to know that that same woman, after becoming my wife, would begin pressuring me to "get a real job" despite the fact that my business was making plenty of money? She seriously told me that the music thing was fine "at the time" but that she "figured I would eventually grow up and get a real job like everybody else". Um... NO... don't think so... I made it very clear to you from day one that this is the way I want to make my living and I do not intend to change that! See, in order to keep her happy, I had to do the following things.
1) Change the way I made my money (goodbye music business, hello "real job" - preferably teaching in a public school)
2) Change the way I lived (goodbye being unusual and eccentric, hello blending in with everyone else out there)
3) Change the way I thought about how to live (as in, I have always been a simple guy but she needed shiny new fancy things on a regular basis... which is strange, as she grew up poor and always used to tell me that that experience taught her that one does not need "things" in order to have a good life. That changed too, into "well now I want to have nice things because I was never able to have them before!")
Now, I'm a pretty smart dude. I've been tested to have an IQ higher than 99.97% of the American population. But the thing is that she was very smart as well. Though she wasn't IQ-tested, she sure did graduate college magna *** laude. She was the golden girl of her college's education department. This girl had brains, and she had a good work ethic. Whatever she wanted to accomplish, she was able to accomplish. It really isn't that hard to put on an act for a guy. Women do it all the time. Most of them aren't able to maintain the act for very long. She had the intelligence to know what to do, the ability to be able to do what had to be done, and the work ethic to stick it out as long as she had to for the goal to be achieved. And she won. I hate to admit it, but she succeeded in deceiving me. I did escape so that she wouldn't totally ruin my life, but she was very good at putting on that act. Had she been honest, we'd have broken up for certain, very early on.
That said, I'm approaching my fourth anniversary with my wife. I haven't had to change a thing since marrying her... and fundamentally, my wife hasn't had to change anything either.
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Originally Posted by Nick538
That woman you marry at 25 is not going to be the same woman at 45. You must accept that going in.
There's a difference between the changes that a person can't help, and the changes that a person CAN help. For example, chances are you'll have more gray hair and wrinkles at 45 than you did at 25. It happens, and there is no "fault" involved. You may not have the kind of energy at 45 that you had at 25. It's not like you chose to allow that to happen. But if a woman becomes more of a nag at 45 than she was at 25 - such that things which never bothered her before now bother her a lot - it is reasonable to assume that you've been bamboozled in some way. That's what happened to my dad. Things that bothered my mom were kept silent for years because she also had a self-esteem problem in her 20's... and then as she "grew up", she decided to come out with what had always bothered her. That's the sort of unwelcome change which drives the divorce rate. If people would just be real and transparent no matter what the cost, we would find fewer marriages but far fewer divorces.
There's a difference between the changes that a person can't help, and the changes that a person CAN help. For example, chances are you'll have more gray hair and wrinkles at 45 than you did at 25. It happens, and there is no "fault" involved. You may not have the kind of energy at 45 that you had at 25. It's not like you chose to allow that to happen. But if a woman becomes more of a nag at 45 than she was at 25 - such that things which never bothered her before now bother her a lot - it is reasonable to assume that you've been bamboozled in some way. That's what happened to my dad. Things that bothered my mom were kept silent for years because she also had a self-esteem problem in her 20's... and then as she "grew up", she decided to come out with what had always bothered her. That's the sort of unwelcome change which drives the divorce rate. If people would just be real and transparent no matter what the cost, we would find fewer marriages but far fewer divorces.
I think it's reasonable to assume that men as well change over time. And it's not always for the better.
Personally, I don't see it as a feather in your cap to be a martyr and stay in a miserable situation until one partner mercifully dies. People of that generation "made it work" because there were few resources for those who wanted to get out of a bad and/or abusive marriage. My grandma was quite the trailblazer that respect, as she left her husband when he started to become abusive. Divorced at 32, with 4 kids (one of whom was an infant),she got a couple of jobs, supported the household, and enjoyed the heck out of being able to live life on her own terms. But she was a rare case, as most women were too afraid to try and make it in their own because decent jobs for women were so hard to come by.
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Originally Posted by Slowpoke_TX
Heaven forbid that when (not if, but when) things get tough, we do what our grandparents did: honor your vows & make it work.
It's sad how people these days will throw away a marriage as if it were an empty Starbucks cup. Apparently, "for better or for worse" doesn't mean jack $@!# to some people.
Personally, I don't see it as a feather in your cap to be a martyr and stay in a miserable situation until one partner mercifully dies. People of that generation "made it work" because there were few resources for those who wanted to get out of a bad and/or abusive marriage. My grandma was quite the trailblazer that respect, as she left her husband when he started to become abusive. Divorced at 32, with 4 kids (one of whom was an infant),she got a couple of jobs, supported the household, and enjoyed the heck out of being able to live life on her own terms. But she was a rare case, as most women were too afraid to try and make it in their own because decent jobs for women were so hard to come by.
I will never understand why people stay in a relationship when they're not happy. If you no longer are in love with your partner, why waste your time? Wouldn't you want to find someone else to be with rather than "stick it out" because your marriage vows told you to? Sure, you can make an effort to try to make the relationship better but if after trying it's still not working for you, then leave. People fall out of love, it happens. It's nothing to be ashamed about, it's nothing to feel bad about. That's life.
One time I punched a wall. Over and over. It hurt. It was tough. But I showed the world that I wasn't afraid of pain and that I had fortitude.
That's kindof what I envision from your post. Suicide rates are down in some populations with the popularity of divorce rising. A good marriage can be good, but a bad one forced is just punching a wall for the sake of grandpa's work ethic.
A bad marriage can become good, just as a good one can go bad.
Personally, I don't see it as a feather in your cap to be a martyr and stay in a miserable situation until one partner mercifully dies. People of that generation "made it work" because there were few resources for those who wanted to get out of a bad and/or abusive marriage. My grandma was quite the trailblazer that respect, as she left her husband when he started to become abusive. Divorced at 32, with 4 kids (one of whom was an infant),she got a couple of jobs, supported the household, and enjoyed the heck out of being able to live life on her own terms. But she was a rare case, as most women were too afraid to try and make it in their own because decent jobs for women were so hard to come by.
Abuse is a completely different situation than the "for worse" that one spoke of in their wedding vows.
In case of abuse, divorce is justified Biblically & legally.
Most people change/ evolve over time. I am thankful I am a different person now in my 40's than the clueless 20 something I was a few decades ago. I am glad I didn't marry any of the guys I was dating back then as I could never imagine being with any of them today. People grow up and apart.
But the same could be said about any age. One will likely be a different person at 60 than they are at 40. Does that mean you shouldn't marry at 40 either? As people get older especially, their personalities tend to change - I find the older a person gets the more confident they become, less patient, less tolerant towards certain things, people become more ingrained in certain habits and ideas and less flexible to change. They are much more practical, less optimistic and romantic. Not everyone but these are fairly common tendencies. This is why, in fact, people who have remained single past their 40s or so will generally be unwilling or find it very difficult to enter a committed relationship, than those who have married young and have 'grown up' together. Giving up the 'bachelor/ette' lifestyle and sharing a living space with someone becomes less desirable when you no longer have the drive of youthful optimism and romance behind it.
Not to mention that something like a single life event can easily change a person forever - it can take one truly traumatic experience to transform a personality at any age. And a young person who has had to face adversity and made it through may very well be more prepared than an older one who's had a charmed easy life.
What does that all mean? Means age really has nothing to do with it. It's more about your personal attitudes, maturity, flexibility. If you marry at 20 knowing and realizing life will hold all sorts of changes and surprises for you, and you go into the relationship with the commitment and knowledge that you will face them together, you'll be fine. If you marry at 40 expecting the other person to forever cater to your whims (always stay young and beautiful, never be in a bad mood, always be up for sex, bring you flowers and breakfast in bed every day etc etc), you'll be in for failure. If you expect to always be treated as the #1 priority for your partner regardless of kids, other family, health issues etc and with no regard for anything but the amount of attention you receive, you'll fail (Seems to be a trait here among those who say the marriage should always come first, before kids or anything else - I don't agree). There are mature teens and immature 60 year olds. Age does not = maturity or wisdom.
On average yes, it does. Not to mention why would you want to marry at a young age when you know how many people you come across, meet, have relationships with, have crushes on, have sex with, make out with, blah blah blah when you're in your 20's & 30's? And you're going to limit all of that because you married someone at 21 & now you're stuck with that person when someone else you meet could be much better for you? No. Sorry but experience really does trump.
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