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I'd go into the link and in the middle of the transcript it says "Read Excerpt from the book" and the info she has there better covers the perspective with divorce. The whole thing is how she and her husband had sworn after their own divorces to never marry again.
Personally, I found watching the interview more enlightening then just trying to understand her from a portion of a transcript (there is some missing information in the transcript). I believe she did significant research and she is simply presenting data that she collected and was not attempting to bash anyone or garner a huge "See I TOLD YOU SO" type thing.
I believe the data she collected is true and while it addresses a great section of the populice we, of course, can't say it applies to everyone, but I also took into account her attitude and experience going into this and it was never her intent to come to a predetermined conclusion - what she found suprised even her. If anything, she is addressing a man's practicality to marriage being more solid than a woman's and coming from a woman who had been married, divorced and remarried after saying she never would, gives her a certain credibility other researchers and writers have. Her focus was on a person's physical health and things of that nature.
I have 12 Aunts and all of them have been divorced, some more than once. While they all had various reasons and no two were the same I can't tell you how the only thing they ever talked to me about as I grew up was planning out my wedding...no one teaches you about marriage but there is a huge industry devoted to the wedding. It's understanding what happens after the wedding part where there is a block and grand romantic expectations get dashed. She emphasized that what one isn't looking at beyond the wedding is that 15 to 30 years from now is not going to be like your first kiss and all giddy and exciting. I think what she is trying to put out there is a way to look at things in the long haul when choosing a partner to wed and have a marriage with. She also delves into different cultures and does some comparing with them. I'd say she has some pretty sound advice.
Precisely. I do believe marriage benefits men, although I don't know if it benefits them more than it does women.
I also believe divorce is much harder on men than it is on women.
I believe men who are in happy marriages look better, feel better and have a positive energy about them which translates to success in many areas of their life.
Precisely. I do believe marriage benefits men, although I don't know if it benefits them more than it does women.
I also believe divorce is much harder on men than it is on women.
Once again, if you guys would open the link to the whole transcript you will find she does discuss divorce - marriage and divorce from around the world:
"But Gilbert is in turmoil for much of "Committed," (Movie title Eat, Pray Love) her new book, in which she explores and eventually comes to terms with marriage -- an institution she vowed not to re-enter after a bitter divorce from her first husband."
CNN: So you dedicated yourself to study marriage. What surprised you the most about your research?
Gilbert: If you look at the history of marriage, anytime you see a conservative culture of arranged marriage being replaced by a more liberal culture of romantic marriage ... you will see divorce rates start to rise immediately.
It turns out that love is a very fragile notion upon which to base a very important and complicated institution. I think most people throughout history would look at the way we choose our marriages today and just think, my God, these people took huge risks. They risk their future, financial stability, property and their heirs on something as fragile and delicate as romantic affection.
It's not that that necessarily means that I advocate a return to arranged marriage, it just helps put in perspective why contemporary western marital arrangements can become so chaotic.
When love dies, and that's the only thing that holds you together, there is nothing to keep the marriage intact.
The book, of course, goes into a lot more detail and information regarding divorce. But look at the fact this is a woman who had a bitter divorce and still credits men for having more practicality in marriage which to me says she is presenting her findings in an unbiased manner. There are things she discovered about herself and her own misguided ideals of marriage. When she speaks of benefitting men she is discussing that more single men have heart attacks then married men, are less likely to die a tragic death...she is comparing single men against married men. In her research she discovers the opposite holds true when it comes to single women vs. married women.
Again, this is not just her opinion, it's research in which she provides statistics on various things and she is trying to instill selecting the right partner in the first place to avoid divorce.
Last edited by Thursday007; 02-13-2010 at 11:06 AM..
Sorry Thursday, I tried to rep you. I agree with her findings and it's a big reason why I'm in no rush to marry. I don't need a surrogate Dad to pay my bills, I don't need to have a house full of kids to feel loved or needed. I would rather stay in a relationship as long as it works and be free to move on when it doesn't. I'm all to aware that in a traditional marriage I would lose years of salary, retirement benefits, and work from sunup past sundown at child rearing and domestic work. How well I do it would be no guarantee that my husband wouldn't get a wild hair up his butt and decide to walk away one day leaving me with kids and re-entry into the rat race. Not my idea of a good life.
Wow, he reinvented the hot water! Must be a man! Women knew that all along! At least in the past women had only one full-time job (unless we're talking a farm or a family business) and now they have two! The liberation!
Planning a wedding and planning a marriage are quite different and many women don't see past planning this romantic wedding and understand the realism of say 30 years from now it won't be like your first kiss. I think for your issue you might want to click on the link and somewhere in the middle it says "Read Excerpts from the book" and click on that and read that excerpt. It better addresses your issue. She was just as suprised as anyone about what she discovered by researching this issue. It's not just her view and opinion.
I have to agree with her on so many levels. I used to do wedding planning and, truthfully, I felt kinda sorry for the grooms I encountered. Some were "allowed" to participate but many weren't, really. They were allowed to sit and listen while their gf and her mother made all the plans. On average, the groom to be would only appear once or twice during the planning. Sometimes I wondered if they really weren't all that interested in the details and would just rather someone else did it all and tell them what to do! There were some couples where both were totally involved and that usually meant they were paying for it all.
I used to wonder, more with some than others, if they had given even one teeny tiny thought to "after the wedding". I do believe that some girls spend their whole lives planning "her special day".
Marriage benefits men more? Ha ha, nice one. Anyone who believes that is as stupid as the author.
Men are ten times more likely than women to commit sucide following a divorce.
Why??
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Must be a man! Women knew that all along! At least in the past women had only one full-time job (unless we're talking a farm or a family business) and now they have two! The liberation!
