Says one millennial — a 24-year-old woman — quoted in "Put a Ring on It? Millennial Couples Are in No Hurry/Young adults not only marry and have children later than previous generations, they take more time to get to know each other before tying the knot" (NYT).
If it’s just love, I’m not sure it would work... But if it's also not just love, but includes all of those things you've consumed youthful years sorting out, you still won't be sure it will work. The question isn't how can I be sure...
... it's how sure do I need to be before I merge my fate, in these few short years I have on earth, with another human being? All of life is a leap into the unknown, and life sweeps by, leaping all around you, even if you stand back, unleaping. Everyone is getting older, and those who hold back, seeking security and hoping somehow eventually to find themselves, may find a lonely, inflexible self that never truly loved.
IN THE COMMENTS: Darrell said:
Luckily, you can run away at the first sign of trouble.Mr. D said:
The only thing you can know is that your circumstances will change, so make sure the person you're with can adapt to the changes.Is the incoherence intended as humor? As a sympathetic reader, I'll assume yes.
Darrell said:
Want to be sure? Find a beautiful 60-year-old then go back in time and grab her at twenty. That'll give you forty good years.Eleanor said:
We're raising kids who are not allowed to take risks. Failure is not an option we give them. They've grown up risk-adverse. It should come as no surprise they're very cautious about getting married. Marriage is a leap of faith. Whether one makes lists and tallies up all the pros and cons, or just jumps off the cliff, it's a big risk. We've been married 45 years, and it was the best return on any investment either of us has ever made, but we didn't think about it that way at the time. We were just two kids who held hands and leaped.If you're ever going to jump, you might want to jump young. Not jumping is taking a different risk.
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112 comments:
Just don't wait too long before you have children if you want them healthy.
All things are possible. Some things are probable. Nothing is sure.
Sometimes you just need to jump in.
If you can’t be with the one you love then love the one you’re with.
Luckily, you can run away at the first sign of trouble.
The only thing you can know is that your circumstances will change, so make sure the person you're with can adapt to the changes.
I have been married twice. Neither was a rational decision. One proved to be a good decision. I doubt that it is possible to make rational decisions on marriage. The system is too complex, it involves projecting the behavior of humans decades into the future, when those same humans can, at least at first, be highly motivated to hide their own weaknesses and flaws.
I don't think most men should marry before they are forty, but that probably isn't workable at a societal level.
Want to be sure? Find a beautiful 60-year-old then go back in time and grab her at twenty. That'll give you forty good years.
Everyone hates when I say this, but marriage to a good person and having children young, even if it ends in divorce, is not going to be a major mistake. Children are a blessing. Still, you have to choose as well as you can.
Don't worry about what other people are thinking so much. The people who love you, love you.
We're raising kids who are not allowed to take risks. Failure is not an option we give them. They've grown up risk-adverse. It should come as no surprise they're very cautious about getting married. Marriage is a leap of faith. Whether one makes lists and tallies up all the pros and cons, or just jumps off the cliff, it's a big risk. We've been married 45 years, and it was the best return on any investment either of us has ever made, but we didn't think about it that way at the time. We were just two kids who held hands and leaped.
They're all too busy looking at their phones to spend time building the understanding required for a long term, meaningful committed relationship. Sounds also as if they are making the perfect the enemy of the good. My wife and I will celebrate our 38th anniversary this summer. Understanding each other was quite incomplete on our wedding day. In fact, as we've aged, matured, and grown personally, understanding has continued as a work in progress.
-sw
Good advice I once heard: if you cannot picture yourself fucking her mother... The cock wants what the cock wants, and one denies this only at great personal cost.
"My mom says I’m removing all the romance from the equation, but I know there’s more to marriage than just love. If it’s just love, I’m not sure it would work."
So millenial daughter is wiser than her mother here. However, to echo mockturtle, waiting until you are, as it were, fully-formed to marry is not wise. 24 is old enough to be the necessary level of stable and solvent necessary to start a family, or at least thinking seriously about it. Participating in marriage and family is naturally part of the maturing process, not something to undertake when you're "finished". It'll be too late at that point.
Yes, I realize many millenials have onerous levels of debt that interferes with marriage and family formation, but that's another rant about the perfidy of the greedy vampiric old toward the gullible young.
Jokes aside, we ruined them when we wouldn't let them ride in a stroller without a helmet. Ok, still joking, sort of...
Read Jane Austen. It’s all there.
Babies are cheaper than people think, if you take the status stuff out of it.
We have a heart and a brain. It's best if they're in agreement on matters of love.
Charles Kramer said...
Read Jane Austen.
Sadly, no one does this any more. More likely to have seen the Jersey Shore.
I'd like to know who I am is a life-long question.
If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster.
BCARM: I don't think most men should marry before they are forty, but that probably isn't workable at a societal level.
Nah, forty is pushing it. Men have more time than women, but they don't have time to burn, either. Even physiologically: while attempting to reproduce after one's prime is nowhere near as iffy for men as for women, genetic QA in sperm production is declining by forty.
Not that it wouldn't usually work out fine (my father was on the wrong side of fifty when I came along, so I'm hardly one to deplore older fathers), but as a general rule, "I can put off family formation 'til forty" is not a good idea.
We're raising kids who are not allowed to take risks. Failure is not an option we give them. They've grown up risk-adverse. It should come as no surprise they're very cautious about getting married. Marriage is a leap of faith. Whether one makes lists and tallies up all the pros and cons, or just jumps off the cliff, it's a big risk. We've been married 45 years, and it was the best return on any investment either of us has ever made, but we didn't think about it that way at the time. We were just two kids who held hands and leaped.
We've also grown up with parents or parents of friends who are divorced, and we've seen how that affects families.
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
So millenial daughter is wiser than her mother here. However, to echo mockturtle, waiting until you are, as it were, fully-formed to marry is not wise. 24 is old enough to be the necessary level of stable and solvent necessary to start a family, or at least thinking seriously about it. Participating in marriage and family is naturally part of the maturing process, not something to undertake when you're "finished". It'll be too late at that point.
Yes, I realize many millenials have onerous levels of debt that interferes with marriage and family formation, but that's another rant about the perfidy of the greedy vampiric old toward the gullible young.
I'd argue that being fully financially secure can be a detriment. It makes it harder to build a life with someone else if both of you are coming into the relationship with "your" stuff.
I'm 35 and I see a lot of dating profiles where the woman says, "I have a job, a house, etc." as a way of proving that she's self-sufficient and independent. The thing is... I don't really care. I'm perfectly happy to work while she stays home and takes care of the kids, and I'm not about to move into some condo in LA, so none of that is important to me.
Eddie Brigati. Great singer. A good looking guy, except the shortness and bad teeth. Very few people get everything.
The remarkable thing is the number of young people I see doing all the middle-class things, having and raising children together, buying a house together, managing their finances together, and not getting married. I don’t know if that’s to maintain the illusion of freedom but it’s definitely an increasingly common thing.
If you spend too much time looking for faults you’ll find some. But can you then find someone else whom you’d rather wake up next to before you reach the point where no one wants to wake up next to you?
The remarkable thing is the number of young people I see doing all the middle-class things, having and raising children together, buying a house together, managing their finances together, and not getting married. I don’t know if that’s to maintain the illusion of freedom but it’s definitely an increasingly common thing.
Society is less demanding that a young couple get married, combined with the insane notion that a wedding should be a giant blowout party for 300 of your closest friends. Why spend the money if you don't have to?
Ah, I remember sitting in a hot spring back in the 80's listening to what sounded like a dating couple discussing their stock portfolios. Sexy stuff.
"those who hold back, seeking security and hoping somehow eventually to find themselves, may find a lonely, inflexible self that never truly loved."
True. But is raises the philosophical question whether "all you need is love" or whether some people are so unloving or unlovable that never truly loving is their proper mode of life.
Good advice I once heard: if you cannot picture yourself fucking her mother... The cock wants what the cock wants, and one denies this only at great personal cost.
Ah, now this is the type of hard-heartedness I grew up with in LA. I figured all men were like this. It was the Hollywood influence. I had to move to flyover to meet human beings.
Besides, a true cocksman would not have sex with a 60 year old under any circumstances. Well, maybe Bill Clinton or Warren Beatty..
How do you know it is real? Real love?
How do you know who you are?
You can't "know". You will never "know". Get over it.
Love is a fluid state. What you have as a couple newly in love is something entirely different from what you will have as a married/long term couple who have been up/down/ and through the mill.
Who you are is also a fluid state. Every experience changes you. Some for the better. Some for the worse. Your partner is also in a fluid state. If you are lucky, work at your partnership, communicate, you might change in the same direction (or at least a complimentary direction). As you get older, you do become less accepting of change. More settled with life. That is part of the fluid experience of life.
Waiting until you are SURE you "know" to have children can be a very very bad idea. Because the biggest most life changing event to who you are and how you are as a couple is the introduction of children. People are wise to make that life changing event when they are still young and more flexible to change.
Young people need to stop obsessing over everything and just ......go with the flow :-)
No fault divorce made it a really bad deal.
The signs and portents all point the same way, to an ongoing cataclysm.
Its the auto-extermination of the global middle class through failure to reproduce.
It is human extinction, or at least of that part of the human race that is capable of creating and maintaining a technological society. And all accomplished through a set of evil mind-viruses, contagious ideas, which perform like one of those insidious pest control schemes that suppress effective mating.
The most telling illustration of how this works, and most apt for this case, are the first few minutes of Judge's "Idiocracy".
This generation is unstable. They didn’t have security.
This generation has no ties. Too much divorce and single parenthood. Families spread across the country.
Now they have to decide if they’re male or female.
Well done boomers! You’re watching the fallout you started.
In high school my daughter had female friends who were products of divorce. They handled breakups in a different way.
One friend spent 3-4 days with dad then 3-4 days with Mom. Same school but stuff in 2 places.
Cracker Emcee Rampant: The remarkable thing is the number of young people I see doing all the middle-class things, having and raising children together, buying a house together, managing their finances together, and not getting married. I don’t know if that’s to maintain the illusion of freedom but it’s definitely an increasingly common thing.
Yeah, I see this. I don't know if it's so much "maintaining the illusion of freedom" - that's more of a Boomer and Gen-X thing; the millenials I know in this situation seem pretty stable and committed. I supspect it's more growing up with the insecurity of their parents' divorce(s). Somewhere in the back of their minds marriage=divorce=insecurity, instability, chaos.
Its the auto-extermination of the global middle class through failure to reproduce.
Sorry the totalitarians vile progs always hated the middle class and worked their magic. In school, on TV,....
Next month, my wife and I will celebrate our 35th anniversary. We were older, non-traditional college students when we married. Our wedding cost about $100. Money was very tight for our first years of marriage. That kind of challenge can either make a marriage stronger or tear it apart. Obviously, we survived. We made mistakes along the way but learned together and have a strong marriage as a result.
Too many of today's young people are the products of broken marriages or single parents. If it wasn't their parents who divorced, it was their friends' parents. That's enough to make anyone gun shy about marriage. There's also the notion of "having it all" that's just a fantasy for most people. You shouldn't expect to start out at the same standard of living that it took your parents decades to achieve.
What's the secret to a long marriage? Here's my list:
1. Work together to achieve common goals.
2. If you see something that needs doing, do it.
3. Honor your wedding vows, especially the "forsaking all others" and "until death do you part" portions.
4. Don't die young.
"Idiocracy" is worth it just for its opening segment. Everyone in the position of that young lady should be made to watch those few minutes.
It puts on display all the trivial quibbles, fashionable hesitations, imprudent prudence, followed, once reproduction is finally desired, by repeated failure, dawning despair, and then mad rationalization.
All the while the animals just get on with it.
—As you get older, you do become less accepting of change. More settled with life. That is part of the fluid experience of life.—
And thanking God we found each other and aren’t out there in that mess. 30 happy years in a couple of months.
Angle-Dyne, Angelic Buzzard said...
Nah, forty is pushing it. Men have more time than women, but they don't have time to burn, either. Even physiologically: while attempting to reproduce after one's prime is nowhere near as iffy for men as for women, genetic QA in sperm production is declining by forty.
Men keep themselves in better shape these days (I blame the gays), so they are generally physically up to the challenge of child-bearing. I agree declining fertility is an issue, but again the healthy ones should be OK.
My only point, to the extent that I have one, is that I have seen a lot of marriages where the only problem with the marriage was that the men really didn't want to be married. A lot of men get married when they aren't ready, emotionally/psychologically, to be married. Wait 10 or 15 years and they make perfectly adequate husbands.
@ Seeing Red
Congratulations.
Just celebrated our 25th anniversary + 2 years of dating. Second marriage for both of us following our awful firsts.
We couldn't be happier.....well....we could win the lottery ;-) It seems like no time has passed.
Married thirty-three and had a career as a marital therapist. Marriage is about committing to stay together during the developmental stresses of each spouse. If it is based on feelings, it is not marriage. If you define "love" as "what can I get", you lose; if you define "love" as "what can I give", you win. However, that doesn't sell things, does it?
—Yes, I realize many millenials have onerous levels of debt that interferes with marriage and family formation, but that's another rant about the perfidy of the greedy vampiric old toward the gullible young.—
I didn’t force them to choose that college and study that field or do it in that time window. I didn’t vote for the guy who grabbed control of college loans. Put the risk back where it belongs on the banks and things will change. i was shocked when the accountant asked for a tax form for college. We still haven’t been sucked into the FATCA hole either. Don’t blame me.
We told the kid you get X. Go to JC and get your badics out of the way. Choose wisely.
It’s the former Chicago mob government who is squeezing the yout.
7%? Really?
Thank you!
We couldn't be happier.....well....we could win the lottery ;-) It seems like no time has passed.
I know! Where did the time go?
We are still happy to spend time together. We want to!
But we aren’t retired yet! Things might change....
My only point, to the extent that I have one, is that I have seen a lot of marriages where the only problem with the marriage was that the men really didn't want to be married. A lot of men get married when they aren't ready, emotionally/psychologically, to be married. Wait 10 or 15 years and they make perfectly adequate husbands.
Historically, men married in their late twenties/early thirties, while women married in their late teens/early twenties. I would probably be better if that were still the case.
I'm the only one of my five siblings and cousins who got married. The others had loads of relationship but nothing long-term. I'm the only one with children. I'm the only one with grandchildren.
My two female cousins were stunning, beautiful. They had plenty of guys. They just didn't know that they needed commitment.
My children provide me with plenty of heartache, but also plenty of nachas. I so much wish my cousins had found their way to building a full life for themselves. At least one of them is way more successful than me in a material sense. But she has no hesitation in telling me that she would trade in a minute.
Also, marrying and raising kids is by far the hardest and most rewarding thing I have done by far. I think it is helpful to assume it will be hard and live with that mindset. Lots of "good" and "bad" feelings along the way, sure; however, feelings come and go.
The nature of ideas and their propagation is fascinating.
We are looking at a supremely complex and probably chaotic process, involving not just one brain, the workings of which we don't understand, but the interaction of millions of them processing matters of great complexity.
That said, these things can still be engineered, made to function even if the deep mechanics are poorly understood, much like the work of a blacksmith, ignorant of the chemistry and crystallography of his materials.
I am convinced that these exterminating ideas have been engineered.
Of course, I grew up with a father who allowed no time to find yourself. He was ranting about the teenage boomers, late 60s early 70s. He told me that that was BS and if they wanted to find themselves look in the mirror or at their drivers licenses.
Life is a journey. Life is discovery. If you think you’re going to find yourself in your 20s....stay away from me cos you’ll suck the life out of everyone around you grandpa.
MikeR,
We see a great deal of just that, here in the SF Bay Area.
There are hordes of valuable, talented people who are the last of their line, with no children. After them, no one.
Its an enormous tragedy.
And entirely voluntary, whimsical even. Or is it?
BCARM: I agree declining fertility is an issue, but again the healthy ones should be OK.
It's not just declining fertility, it's decline in sperm quality - increasing genetic errors in spermatogenesis. Nothing like the steep increase in genetic abnormalities in ova in women past their prime, but it's there. Being a fit and healthy 40 year old still isn't the same as being a fit and healthy 30 year old, gamete-wise or otherwise as far as raising children goes. Your still 10-15 years closer to old and the random pitfalls of aging and disease.
I agree, it's hardly a disaster if a man dicks around for 40 years before marrying, but "I'm so fit! Forty is the new twenty-five!" is still wishful thinking.
My only point, to the extent that I have one, is that I have seen a lot of marriages where the only problem with the marriage was that the men really didn't want to be married. A lot of men get married when they aren't ready, emotionally/psychologically, to be married. Wait 10 or 15 years and they make perfectly adequate husbands.
I can see that, but there's a larger problem if you have a society where people (men or women) essentially remain adolescents past their physical primes. A society, or class of people, who aren't emotionally/psychologically (or financially) ready for marriage until middle-age is a society or class with deep problems.
Eek. A thread where I agree with all that ARM says.
Got married at 22, just out of college. Now approaching 29 years, with three kids, the youngest finishing junior year of high school.
My guidelines for the young people today:
Decide what is important to you in life. This is the most important decision you will make, so start thinking about it early, so that you have pretty settled goals by the time you are an adult.
If what is important to you includes family, than live your life like that is important. Figure out what kind of person you want for a spouse/parent of your children. Then ask yourself what kind of person you need to be to attract the kind of person you want. Then work on becoming that kind of person.
Eleanor said: “It should come as no surprise they're very cautious about getting married. Marriage is a leap of faith.”
It may not be what Eleanor meant, but it’s difficult to take a leap of faith when you have no faith — reportedly the case with most millennials.
Also, ask yourself: is the person I want for the parent of my children the kind of person who hangs out in bars? Are they the sort of person I'm likely to meet on the dance floor in the basement of a college house party*? If not, then why am I spending my precious time in those places?
*Okay, for the record, I met my future wife on the dance floor in the basement of a college house party. Dancing to Paradise by the Dashboard Lights.
Also, ask yourself: is the person I want for the parent of my children the kind of person who hangs out in bars? Are they the sort of person I'm likely to meet on the dance floor in the basement of a college house party*? If not, then why am I spending my precious time in those places?
*Okay, for the record, I met my future wife on the dance floor in the basement of a college house party. Dancing to Paradise by the Dashboard Lights.
Tarzan. Jane. Hurt me. Boy. Love it. Jane.
Millennials are indeed wiser than those who encourage jumping into a marriage and then having to deal with a divorce 10 years down the road. If a couple is older and marrying for the second time, it’s likely that they’ll be wise enough by then to get a good sense of who their prosepective spouse is sooner. I’ve seen couples who marry in their 30’s and then immediately have children, a trade off of waiting, but being more sure about the relationship. Probably the ideal time to marry is late 20’s, but life isn’t ideal.
Angle-Dyne, Angelic Buzzard said...
It's not just declining fertility, it's decline in sperm quality - increasing genetic errors in spermatogenesis.
Your still 10-15 years closer to old and the random pitfalls of aging and disease.
there's a larger problem if you have a society where people (men or women) essentially remain adolescents past their physical primes. A society, or class of people, who aren't emotionally/psychologically (or financially) ready for marriage until middle-age is a society or class with deep problems.
I don't disagree with any of this, just not sure that it fits well with the world we currently live in. A big problem is just how long it takes men to establish themselves in many careers these days and what that implies for how much time/energy they have to devote to marriage/child rearing. This tends to be a problem at the top end, on the other end blame China.
The Goldilocks husband is one who finishes his education relatively quickly and then enters a profession with clear cut and relatively undemanding policies for advancement. There were a lot of these jobs in my parents day. It seems to me that this is less true today.
Ken B said...
Eek. A thread where I agree with all that ARM says.
Welcome to the dark side.
If you both laugh every day, it's a good marriage.
If only one is, not so much.
2/3s the way through comment's before 'commitment' is mentioned. Commitment is key. If I were to try to do some kind of multivariate analysis I think commitment would end up as the single most important factor in a good and lasting marriage.
Relationships present a progressive risk since the Pro-Choice Church denigrated individual dignity (i.e. diversity), debased human life (i.e. normalization of abortion rites), and inflated (e.g. unaffordable medical care, liberally redistributed Medicare, social security funds for profit) cost-of-living with redistributive change. The cost of a minority's overtake of capital and control has been reduced real wealth and torture and abortion of human life on an unprecedented scale a la Planet of the Apes. Also, corruption of science, government, community, etc.
An unmarried woman over 30 has at best a 50:50 chance of having any children at all going forward, from my examination of available data, which comes from reduced prospects of marriage, from increasing infertility and from the reduction in quality of prospective mates. And the odds are such women will have very few children. And they will furthermore have higher risks of birth defects and other problems like autism, due to both maternal and paternal age.
Waiting for perfect circumstances to have children is extremely risky. The actual risk structure of such decisions is completely inverted from that which is commonly assumed. It is far, far worse to wait. Putting off having children is much worse, statistically, than having them young.
Life isn't ever going to be ideal, no matter what. What can go wrong will. The problem is that people are being deluded to mis-value relative risks.
Celebrated our 43rd anniversary last winter. It helps if the guy thinks his bride is out of his league and 43 years later is still pinching himself that he got so lucky.
Commitment is significant, but don't forget the other 'C'-words: compromise, communication, courtesy, and trust.
I am sorry, but time is not on your side. It always seems like it is when you are under 30, but that is a terrible delusion.
In the old days, the rules of the game were simple: boys competed against boys, the winner got the best girls.
To get a lot of sex, the male married.
To get social status, protection, and kids, the female married.
This was premised on the fact that the male steadily worked and provided. If he got bored with the marital sex, he had a mistress or two.
The great upheaval in the late 60s and 70s changed all this.
Males said, Sex is easy and fun and plentiful without marriage! Yippee!
Females said, fuck this, I don't like getting treated like a doormat, I'm gonna become a breadwinner too!
Many kids were casualties, but the new rules of the game are that men and women compete for professional jobs. So, you often have a two-professional parents. This has its benefits and drawbacks, but can work out nicely.
An unmarried woman over 30 ... And they will furthermore have higher risks of birth defects
Planned Parenthood is a a progressive risk to both the mother and child. However, it's profitable for politics, business, "healthcare", and Planned Parenthood.
Do not make it your life goal to be Parent Edwina in absolutely fabulous. You leave that side for your grandchildren.
Tim in Vermont asserts: Everyone hates when I say this, but marriage to a good person and having children young, even if it ends in divorce, is not going to be a major mistake. Children are a blessing. Still, you have to choose as well as you can.
I certainly don't hate you for saying this. I totally agree.
Am I the only one who had to go to pre-marriage counseling? We had classes which covered many sticky questions like finance, how to fight nice, what to do when the kids come, how to learn to live together. It was taught by couples from our parish at different stages of life. Young newlyweds, with young kids, with older kids, empty nester older couple. We even had an interview with the priest. This could be a Catholic thing.
I once heard a wise man say men need to marry a kind women. Reason: when the children come he becomes relegated, so a kind woman is important
I've been thrice married. But the third time was the charm, as it lasted forty years, until my husband's death. My first marriage was very short lived and was of necessity [at that time, one married when one got pregnant and though I had dreams of a successful marriage he was simply too young]. My second marriage was fine while it lasted and I've never regretted it for an instant. My third was to the love of my life but I'm glad I didn't wait until I met him to have children, as I was in my late 20's and he in his mid-forties.
Tina asks: Am I the only one who had to go to pre-marriage counseling? We had classes which covered many sticky questions like finance, how to fight nice, what to do when the kids come, how to learn to live together. It was taught by couples from our parish at different stages of life. Young newlyweds, with young kids, with older kids, empty nester older couple. We even had an interview with the priest. This could be a Catholic thing.
I think some Evangelical churches do that, too. Not a bad idea. I was not a Christian when I married--not until I was 37, in fact.
BCARM: I don't disagree with any of this, just not sure that it fits well with the world we currently live in.
Oh, I don't disagree. That's what I meant by "a society with serious problems".
I'd love to say we were brilliant or wise. We were very lucky. We met at 18 and 19 years old. I knew and he knew within weeks. No doubts.
I feel for this kid. How do you marry someone if you don't feel that confidence and comfort?
Some people never find someone. We found each other at a good school. Someone from my church group threw a party. Access to social networks helps. Some twenty-somethings have better networks then others.
Our parents met young and had one marriage. Parents took both of us to church. Both of us in scouting and church youth groups. Good examples. Again, lucky. No scars of divorce or other stuff to make us cynical about marriage. Parents paid for our higher ed and our wedding. Grandparents paid for a downpayment on a house. Again, Lucky. You can't choose your family. Parents gave us an old car, fixed it up, and helped us pack our stuff. Again, lucky. All of it encouraged a stable marriage. We were uncommonly lucky. We're going to do the same for our kids.
Advice on who to date. Told a twenty-year old that she should only date men who are kind. Genuinely kind. Not the type of people who are only nice to people who are more powerful or when they want something. This was a revelation to her. Her next boyfriend was a HUGE improvement.
Marry someone who is kind, loyal, ethical and has integrity. Once married, my advice would be to not hold grudges, be kind, find a win-win solutions, and laugh a lot. Have fun. Don't divorce over stupid stuff or mistakes. If money can fix it, it's not a real problem. Forgive bonehead mistakes. Real problems are death, sickness, tragedy, stillbirth, miscarriage, things that can't be changed.
Divorce is easier on parents then kids. The parents get what they want. The kids get their first nuclear family ripped apart. They won't get that back.
Divorce can cause children to be less trusting of relationships when they are grown.
Divorce divides family resources. College, IRA education funds for grandkids. The grandparent's loyalties aren't divided between two families.
Twenty and thirty somethings who get this kind of support are less likely to divorce. People get less trusting of relationships and divorce or don't marry. People are more likely to divorce or not marry if they get too much economic stress. These cycles perpetuate themselves.
Marriage is State Sponsored Terrorism.
"An unmarried woman over 30 ... And they will furthermore have higher risks of birth defects"
The difference between 25 and 42 is big. The difference between 28 and 33 is not. The real danger is infertility for people who wait too long.
Birth and implantation is a miracle. The embryos and the uterine lining "talk" to each other. I love that they communicate, somehow. Most embryos that are not healthy will not implant. Fertility specialists have found that about 50% of embryos from even 25 year old women are not genetically correct.
Me, I think you should marry and have kids young. Kids have no downsides except for that short stretch between 13 and 16 when they are exasperating. But my kids are the best thing that ever happened to me. If you have your kids in your twenties they are out and on their own when you and your wife are in your forties (IMHO the prime of life) Now, I didn't exactly follow my own advice, but a there's no reason for anyone else to make the same errors I did. And Wilbur's right, Eddie Brigati is a great singer. And the Young Rascals were a fantastic band that is consistently overlooked.
Besides, a true cocksman would not have sex with a 60 year old under any circumstances.
Who said anything about being a “true cocksman”? I was talking about a regular guy who is thinking of marrying a girl. It’s not a bad idea to think about what she is going to look like in 20 or 30 years. Of course this is one of those comments, like the “planet of the apes” comment, where nobody can be in the moment and hear it for what it is. The whole point of the comment was that you want to still be fucking her when she is sixty. This isn’t a calculation that the “true cocskman” you seem to focus on need worry about. But your “No true cocksman” argument is pretty funny just as a bit of ironic crapola.
tim in vermont said...
The whole point of the comment was that you want to still be fucking her when she is sixty.
I thought the point was to try to arrange a threesome with her and her mom.
Which would be wrong.
So stop thinking about it.
Like now.
Marry someone who is kind, loyal, ethical and has integrity.
No doormats. Doormats earn no respect. There are people who might perceive my DH to be a doormat because I can be a pushy broad, but he doesn’t care. We all spend too much time judging the book by its cover.
Question to ask about Planned Parenthood...
Who's planning whose Parenthood?
Answer may surprise you.
One idea my late father in law told me about was the concept of being “thrown.” We are all “thrown” in life. We course forward and the choices me make as we “fly through the air” impact the future, including the choice to do nothing, and we only have the information available to us that we have at the time we are forced make these choices. The one choice we absolutely cannot make is the choice to go back. The other choice we can’t make is the stop.
That's the way marriage was until recently, a mostly economic arrangement. All this silly love and romance crap is what ruined the institution.
We went Tina and not Catholic. Took the test didn’t score high I think very few people including the Pastor thought it would last. But his strengths are my weaknesses and visa versa.
Remember, if you don’t hang together, you’ll hang separately. Dead white Founding Fathers are full of wisdom. And those kids let me tell you....
I met a boy in junior high school when I was 13. We were friends all through high school. Everyone knew we kinda sorta liked each other but we never dated. Then I came home from college for the summer...once we got together everyone knew we were going to get married even though he never proposed.
We talked about everything, all of our plans. He wanted a girl first. He practiced feeding me cake on his twenty-first birthday party with both my and his mother in attendance. To get the urge of cake smooshing out of the way.
Then we broke up. That was the first time I was ever so sad that I actually felt as though I had a weight bearing down on me.
Two years later I met my husband. I did not know him nearly as well as my first boyfriend when we got married. We didn't discuss kids, stay home parenting, etc. We just fit. We dated for three years and have been married for twenty-four.
I can definitely look back and say I am amazingly happy that my first boyfriend got drunk at a party and cheated on me. Sometimes you can think you know someone and be completely wrong.
Blogger Darrell said...
Want to be sure? Find a beautiful 60-year-old then go back in time and grab her at twenty. That'll give you forty good years.
100% Darrell. My older brother taught me that when I was in Jr High. I followed his advise and he didn't! It worked out OK for him single at 70 has his choice of 50 to 60-yo hotties.
The best thing is being young grand parents and having a longer adult relationship with your kids. Nothing I have ever experienced in life beats being the Paterfamilias.
I don't buy anybody's systems or rules for getting married. Said we'd get married on the first date, officially engaged within a week, married within two months, and now it's been 16 years. Extraordinarily happy.
You're not marrying a checklist. You're marrying a human being who will change. Leap into the adventure together with the emphasis on the adventure being together.
Well said, Freeman!
there’s more to marriage than just love
One thing that there is in an enduring marriage is a proper understanding of "love," which sadly is sorely missing these days. Which is kind of ironic given all the emphasis on choice in our time.
I can definitely look back and say I am amazingly happy that my first boyfriend got drunk at a party and cheated on me. Sometimes you can think you know someone and be completely wrong.
I know couples whose engagements lasted longer than their marriages.
We're raising kids who are not allowed to take risks. Failure is not an option we give them. They've grown up risk-adverse
Part of the problem is that there is so much at risk today. When your life expectancy is fifty years of brutal labor living among squalor, you're willing to take risks. When you are virtually guaranteed a long life of previously undreamt of ease and comfort as long as you don't take any risks, you aren't so willing.
Am I the only one who had to go to pre-marriage counseling?
I went. One of the most useful points of information was when the mentor couple said that no matter how much in blissful love we were in, after a few years of marriage, we would look at each other in contempt and disgust, sick and tired of each other. As Freeman said, "You're marrying a human being who will change." At that point a lot of couples think that the marriage is a failure and break up. Actually, it's just human nature.
But if you stick through it and allow the other person to be an imperfect human being rather than perfection on a pedestal, they said, you would come out with a deeper and more pure love.
I have seen the wisdom of that lesson in other long-term couples. (My fiance at the time and I never did get to the wedding.)
There is nothing wrong with being satisfied with "good enough." Those who expect more are sure to be disappointed. Those who accept it often find that "good enough" is actually very good.
Someone should also tell young couples that they will probably fight more in the first two years than in the all the years of the following decade (possibly even all the following years of the marriage) combined. A secret knowledge.
I'm a mother of three, and I have children of both gender. I will be suggesting that all of them look for a spouse once they turn 20 or so. There are only so many good partners out there, and most of them are gone by the time you're 30. I know so many people (mostly women unfortunately) in their 30s and even 40s who are lonely and desperate to find someone to marry and start a family with, to no avail. There's a huge degree of luck involved, but starting to look earlier gives you a leg up in the game. Once I was 23, I would no longer date men once I knew I didn't want to marry them or knew they didn't want to get married anytime soon -- I was on the hunt for a husband and a father, not just some fun. (And I feel no need to apologize for that!) It worked out well for me -- I met the handsome, funny, incredibly intelligent, moral, hard-working man I married when I was 24, and married him when I was 26. I feel so lucky and hope my children fare similarly. Like you said, Ann, waiting on marriage carries its own risks. You don't avoid risk by avoiding marriage, you simply court risk of a different kind.
I got married after a 4-month engagement, when I was 23 and she was 20. We had NO IDEA what we were getting into, but it felt right and we just did it, and had 3 kids within 5 years. That was 20 years ago. Now it has worked out ok, but now if I were single there is no way I would jump into a marriage and start having babies. Way too set in my ways. SO, you definitely do need to do it when you are young and foolish, and are able to adapt.
Am I the only one who had to go to pre-marriage counseling?
Nope. We had to do it, too, as a condition of getting married in a Catholic church.
It was an entire weekend with other engaged couples. No tv, radio, etc. Separate rooms dormitory style. We snuck out to a bar after lights out on Saturday night. Probably not what they had in mind.
Got married at 34. She was 28. Dated for four years. Coming up on our 20th this year and couldn't be happier.
Oh, and haven't been back to the church since the wedding. :)
The inclination to love is a passive thing, but love is an active thing that requires effort. A lot of people don’t realize that.
Married 50 years. In all that time, we never had a fight or argument over money--how to get it, how to spend it. This was something we learned about each other in the months we were dating.
It's a pretty good indicator of what kind of a person a prospective spouse is.
Mr. D said:
The only thing you can know is that your circumstances will change, so make sure the person you're with can adapt to the changes.
Althouse said:
Is the incoherence intended as humor? As a sympathetic reader, I'll assume yes.
I said:
How is this incoherence? Am I confused? As a reader, I’ll assume yes.
@DavidD I thought the incoherence was clear enough that it was better not to point it out. Look at the words: "The only thing you can know is that your circumstances will change, so make sure the person you're with can adapt to the changes."
If everything will change, how can you "make sure" of anything? It's coherent if you think that it only means that ability to adapt to change is an important quality in a mate.
Every partnership has a managing partner.
Ray Wylie Hubbard said "And the days that I keep my gratitude higher than my expectations Well, I have really good days."
Beware of a potential partner who does not share that view.
Men and women are equal in rights and complementary in Nature, requires a reconciliation of this corollary of a moral axiom, natural imperative, and pragmatic truth. Avoidance or Pro-Choice is not an option. Couples need to self-moderate and be responsible for their choices and to each other.
Find someone who you think about every day and who thinks about you. Now, play your part, as well as you can, to keep time, make harmony, and hit as many right notes forever and ever amen. Practice, rehearse, perform, and be true. Rinse and repeat.
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