What makes for a stable marriage? • Hacker News Board

Re: What makes for a stable marriage?

#61

Post by king_jester » Sat, Oct 11, 2014, 4:19 PM UTC

jasonparker wrote: post #37

themartorana wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's not really such a thing as a bad marriage so much as selfish participants This is absurd. It's constructed of a series of suppositions, only a few of which I'll address. First is that people are static. This simply isn't true. We all know that we all change - not just in age, wisdom, and so on, but in tastes, politics, religious dedication, and the lines we draw between wrong and right, just to name a few.…

Gotta disagree with you: marriage is a contract, forsaking all others, so long as you both shall live. Divorce means your word is worthless, and that your own wants are more important than your word. It IS a personal failure, but go ahead, rationalize all you want.

> marriage is a contract, forsaking all others, so long as you both shall live

Not everyone views marriage as a contract or as something that cannot be broken ever. The legal status of marriage in a jurisdiction != how people feel about and treat marriage.

> Divorce means your word is worthless, and that your own wants are more important than your word.

Giving your word on something isn't a clause that requires you to give up your own wants and needs. For example, if you married someone and one day they become abusive, you are not obligated to stay and take said abuse.

> It IS a personal failure, but go ahead, rationalize all you want.

This attitude is so unhelpful and smacks of a superiority complex.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage?

#62

Post by venomsnake » Sat, Oct 11, 2014, 4:20 PM UTC

The way I read that graphs - people in upper middle and high class tend to avoid divorce (probably for saving face). It says nothing about stability of the marriage.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage?

#63

Post by king_jester » Sat, Oct 11, 2014, 4:24 PM UTC

smoyer wrote: post #8

themartorana wrote: post #5

A couple of subjective thoughts - the only two points that don't jive for me are that spending huge amounts on a wedding significantly increase the likelihood of divorce, while having 200+ people at your wedding severely decreases it. It seems likely to me that the amount of people who attend the wedding is insignificant, but it can be a good indicator of the importance of close family and community of friends. The o…

"So I'm not sure that religion makes a marriage stronger, it just places a higher degree of shame and stigma on divorce." But perhaps any social pressure that encourages marriage would do the same thing? I've got quite a few friends that have had arranged marriages - they marry strangers and work to build a happy marriage from it because their families expect it. On the other hand, "staying in a bad marriage" is a mi…

> On the other hand, "staying in a bad marriage" is a misnomer - there's not really such a thing as a bad marriage so much as selfish participants. When one more both of the partners refuse to work towards a better marriage, it's practically impossible to make that marriage last.

Uh, there are totally such things as a bad marriage. If, say, your spouse became abusive over time from the perspective of the abused spouse it most certainly a bad marriage.

Marriage isn't a one time negotiation and you are stuck with whatever happens after that. Relationships require constant work and growth over time. If two people find themselves in a place where that relationship isn't working for them and even is outright harmful to their well being, they have all rights to end that relationship.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage?

#64

Post by pinkyand » Sat, Oct 11, 2014, 4:25 PM UTC

jostylr wrote: post #48

I would suggest that if you want a good and wonderful marriage, then respect is key. Have someone observe the couple and watch the dynamic. I wonder how much of the various graphs could correlate with likelihood of respecting the other. I am surprised by the length to proposal. My opinion is that once you meet someone that really clicks, then it works out quickly and well. I wonder if there is another dynamic that co…

> My opinion is that once you meet someone that really clicks, then it works out quickly and well.

Usually that feeling of "click" passes after 2 years and transforms into a mellower , longer lastin kind of love. So if you stay longer, you see how you both fit together under this new kind of love.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage?

#65

Post by pdevr » Sat, Oct 11, 2014, 4:25 PM UTC

stadeschuldt wrote: post #4

Secret of a stable marriage: Invite 200+ attendees to your wedding while keeping the budget below 1000 USD.

Interesting observation.

So then, for women, it is the above, plus this delicate balancing act: Make sure to marry a man who earns enough so that the combined household income is $125k+, while not caring much about his wealth.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage?

#66

Post by analog31 » Sat, Oct 11, 2014, 4:39 PM UTC

chaostheory wrote: post #59

Here's the paper from Emory that the post was based on http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2501480&u... The only thing that was contradictory was the parts about the wedding. How can you not spend 20k or more when there are 200 or more guests?

This was puzzling to me too, especially because there was also a correlation with wealth.

I'm peripherally involved in the wedding industry, as I play in wedding bands. Granted, I only see the weddings where the couple hires live music (not necessarily expensive). But I get to observe some things about the couple, their guests, and how much they spend. All of this is just my biased anecdotal guess:

You don't have 200 friends, so if you've got 200 guests, probably 180 of them are someone else's friends -- distant relatives, business associates of your parents, church members. Perhaps simply being part of a larger network of supportive people helps stabilize your marriage. Especially if you didn't invite them to impress them with your lavish expenditure.

It's just my impression, but it seems like the folks who spent 20k, were the ones who were sold a big package, perhaps because they are young and un-confident about their social stature. They're probably spending someone else's money. I have rarely if ever seen anybody spend that much if they're older than 30 or even 25.

So it's quite possible that the same marriage will destabilize itself when the partners develop their own independent identities, i.e., "change" to the point where they're no longer compatible. Folks who are more comfortable with their own identity may also be comfortable saying "no" to the dozen or more people who are trying to fleece them as they navigate the wedding industry.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage?

#67

Post by fennecfoxen » Sat, Oct 11, 2014, 4:40 PM UTC

chaostheory wrote: post #59

Here's the paper from Emory that the post was based on http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2501480&u... The only thing that was contradictory was the parts about the wedding. How can you not spend 20k or more when there are 200 or more guests?

Well... for starters, you could have the wedding at your local parish church, limiting the expenses of venue rental (and maybe achieving some other economies of scope). If you have an extended network of friends and relatives in the area, they could assist with food preparation instead of hiring caterers. Some guests and relatives may attend the service with their own family and children, bumping the attendance numbers, but skip the reception or send the kids home. Coming in under $100/head should then be easily doable.

Of course this pattern is probably well-correlated with the "goes to church regularly" set and may indicate a level of serious commitment to marriage as "'til death do us part", to say nothing of other demographic differentiation.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage?

#68

Post by Wintamute » Sat, Oct 11, 2014, 4:40 PM UTC

Slightly off topic, but I'm genuinely curious why forward-thinking secular people in the west still want to get married. Historically, and still in many parts of the world, its arguably an incredibly sexist tradition that has its roots in religious and patriarchal control. In many ways it has been completely re-defined, at least in the west, and doesn't have any/many of those connotations any more - but it begs the question, why actually bother now? Why not just partner up with the person you love? Create your own private culture of love and respect between each other. How many couples stay in unhappy situations, and raise children in sad/angry environments, because of the stigma of divorce? Seems like this statistical fretting and min-maxing doesn't help that either.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage?

#69

Post by disallusioned42 » Sat, Oct 11, 2014, 4:42 PM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #57

Xcelerate wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> series of suppositions ... First is that people are static. I don't know of anyone who believes people are static. You even say yourself in the next sentence "We all know that we all change". No one (at least that I'm aware of) goes into marriage expecting the person they marry to stay the same over time. Another HN poster (can't remember who) put it beautifully once: marriage is an agreement to learn to love the p…

> marriage is an agreement to learn to love the person that each of you become over time The supposition that it is always possible to learn to love the other person is as ridiculous as the supposition that people are static. > If both people are in agreement that they might change and get divorced later before the marriage begins, then fine with me. Everyone who gets married knows that the possibility of divorce exi…

> Everyone who gets married knows that the possibility of divorce exists and roughly what divorce proceedings entail.

On the contrary, I had absolutely no idea how difficult divorce proceedings were when I got married. Maybe I was just naive and living in a bubble, but it was a very real shock to me that, since our divorce was amiable, my wife and I couldn't just go in to the courthouse and tell them we didn't want to be married any more. Instead the legal system forces an adversarial process on you.

Maybe this was just because my religious ideals caused me to not even consider divorce as an option. But even then, it's a very real thing and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person to have been in that boat.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage?

#70

Post by smoyer » Sat, Oct 11, 2014, 4:43 PM UTC

pdpi wrote: post #40

smoyer wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like the "gets bored" phrase either ... it's right up there with "he/she changed" (which is a minor variation on "I thought I could changed him/her). "People don't change" is kind of a funny phrase too - there's some truth in it, but I'm certainly not the same person I was when I married over twenty-seven years ago. My wife has changed too - we're not young anymore and yet our love (and devotion) to each othe…

Me and my wife often say about our marriage that neither of us believes in Happily Ever After. There's no such thing as a point at which you stop having to work on the relationship.

Maybe I'm just a hopeless romantic but I'd rather say "Let's work to build our happily-ever-after". Same idea from the positive angle.