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What makes for a stable marriage? Part 2

randalolson.com

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Re: What makes for a stable marriage? Part 2

#71

Post by shittyanalogy »

humanrebar wrote: post #66
shittyanalogy wrote: post #40

None of these things make for a stable marriage. They are statistics about marriages studied. You don't get to draw the inverse conclusion. And besides just because a marriage doesn't end in divorce doesn't mean it's stable.

FTA: Of course, it’s important for us to keep in mind that these are all correlations with marriage stability, and they could be telling us any number of things. For example, the “having kids with your spouse” correlation could go either way: Either people in stabler marriages are more likely to have kids in wedlock, or people in less stable (unhappy) marriages tend not to have kids. All of the explanations I wrote a…

That disclaimer is not enough and doesn't justify a link bait title.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage? Part 2

#72

Post by blisterpeanuts »

flavor8 wrote: post #51
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #37

He didn't address couples counseling and therapy as factors in keeping marriages going. There's always been marriage counseling; today it's a professional therapist you hire, but in the old days it was your priest/rabbi/minister, or perhaps an elder in your household, who advised you on how to get along. Today in First World industrial societies, couples just try to wing it, moving out from the parents' house as soon…

> My amateur theory is that fundamentally speaking a couple is supposed to have kids. It's what we were designed to do. That's certainly what evolution has favored (by definition) in terms of primal drives, but that doesn't mean that living life without them is in some sense "empty". Evolution isn't innately wise; e.g. we have very common diseases like cancers, dementia etc in the population because they tend to show…

I think reproduction is a pretty fundamental instinct that goes back almost to the beginning of life on this planet. We're programmed to reproduce. Even people who intellectually choose not to reproduce are drawn to the sexual act of reproduction, though of course they defeat the mechanism with birth control devices.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage? Part 2

#73

Post by blisterpeanuts »

lisper wrote: post #58
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #37

He didn't address couples counseling and therapy as factors in keeping marriages going. There's always been marriage counseling; today it's a professional therapist you hire, but in the old days it was your priest/rabbi/minister, or perhaps an elder in your household, who advised you on how to get along. Today in First World industrial societies, couples just try to wing it, moving out from the parents' house as soon…

> a couple is supposed to have kids. It's what we were designed to do. This misses to very important points. First, we weren't designed. Second, while it is true that there is evolutionary pressure to have a desire to reproduce one's genes, this is a gross oversimplification of our nature. We are not merely survival machines for our genes. We have these big brains, which give rise to all kinds of interesting secondar…

This misses the fundamental point: we were designed to reproduce. It's innate to not just our species, not just our kingdom, but to basically every living thing.

And yes, I would argue in fact that we are merely survival machines for our genes. We homo sapiens fancy ourselves above the fray, but in reality we are every bit as much part of the cycle of life as are bacteria, trees, and fish.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage? Part 2

#74

Post by lisper »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #73
lisper wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a couple is supposed to have kids. It's what we were designed to do. This misses to very important points. First, we weren't designed. Second, while it is true that there is evolutionary pressure to have a desire to reproduce one's genes, this is a gross oversimplification of our nature. We are not merely survival machines for our genes. We have these big brains, which give rise to all kinds of interesting secondar…

This misses the fundamental point: we were designed to reproduce. It's innate to not just our species, not just our kingdom, but to basically every living thing. And yes, I would argue in fact that we are merely survival machines for our genes. We homo sapiens fancy ourselves above the fray, but in reality we are every bit as much part of the cycle of life as are bacteria, trees, and fish.

> we were designed to reproduce

No, we weren't designed to do anything (because we weren't designed). We reproduce because reproduction is an essential component of the evolutionary process that created us. But:

1) for humans, reproduction of memes is at least as important a component of our evolution as reproduction of genes and

2) even if you consider only reproduction of genes, the reproduction of genes is NOT the same as the reproduction of individuals.

You should read "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage? Part 2

#75

Post by flavor8 »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #72
flavor8 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My amateur theory is that fundamentally speaking a couple is supposed to have kids. It's what we were designed to do. That's certainly what evolution has favored (by definition) in terms of primal drives, but that doesn't mean that living life without them is in some sense "empty". Evolution isn't innately wise; e.g. we have very common diseases like cancers, dementia etc in the population because they tend to show…

I think reproduction is a pretty fundamental instinct that goes back almost to the beginning of life on this planet. We're programmed to reproduce. Even people who intellectually choose not to reproduce are drawn to the sexual act of reproduction, though of course they defeat the mechanism with birth control devices.

I don't think you contradict anything I said - we're in agreement that it's in our programming.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage? Part 2

#76

Post by aliakhtar »

lnanek2 wrote: post #13
qwerta wrote: post #3

I have great advice howto improve your health and productivity tenfold: DO NOT GET MARRIED! EVER! :-)

My first wife really didn't provide any benefit and cost a lot, but the second one has been really beneficial for years. Always someone to come home to who helps with the bills, cooking, laundry, not having to waste time going out to clubs or using Tinder because I'm well taken care of at home, etc.. She even got an investor to say yes to funding a startup me and friends are doing recently by talking the investor's n…

You make it sound like a business arrangement, in which your wife has to provide some 'benefit' or else its not worth it. I can't imagine marrying someone with that type of a relationship.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage? Part 2

#77

Post by aliakhtar »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #37

He didn't address couples counseling and therapy as factors in keeping marriages going. There's always been marriage counseling; today it's a professional therapist you hire, but in the old days it was your priest/rabbi/minister, or perhaps an elder in your household, who advised you on how to get along. Today in First World industrial societies, couples just try to wing it, moving out from the parents' house as soon…

> It's what we were designed to do.

No, we weren't 'designed' to do anything. Evolution hard-wires us to have sex, by making sex pleasurable. Kids are just a by-product. The parental instinct varies from person to person, just like some people are gay, and some people have 0 parental instincts, like me.

> people mistakenly feel they'll have a happier life without them, but in a certain sense it's an empty life.

That's your opinion. My opinion is, my life would be empty if I didn't achieve anything significant because I was too busy looking after kids / paying for them, etc.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage? Part 2

#78

Post by aliakhtar »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #72
flavor8 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My amateur theory is that fundamentally speaking a couple is supposed to have kids. It's what we were designed to do. That's certainly what evolution has favored (by definition) in terms of primal drives, but that doesn't mean that living life without them is in some sense "empty". Evolution isn't innately wise; e.g. we have very common diseases like cancers, dementia etc in the population because they tend to show…

I think reproduction is a pretty fundamental instinct that goes back almost to the beginning of life on this planet. We're programmed to reproduce. Even people who intellectually choose not to reproduce are drawn to the sexual act of reproduction, though of course they defeat the mechanism with birth control devices.

Sure, we're programmed to have sex. But gay people are programmed to have gay sex, which doesn't result in children.

Some people have a parental instinct. Many people, including me, don't.

Re: What makes for a stable marriage? Part 2

#79

Post by genofon »

john_b wrote: post #46
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #37

He didn't address couples counseling and therapy as factors in keeping marriages going. There's always been marriage counseling; today it's a professional therapist you hire, but in the old days it was your priest/rabbi/minister, or perhaps an elder in your household, who advised you on how to get along. Today in First World industrial societies, couples just try to wing it, moving out from the parents' house as soon…

> "Kids are inconvenient and expensive and people mistakenly feel they'll have a happier life without them, but in a certain sense it's an empty life." s/kids/startups/ to see how ridiculous this sounds. Any kind of presumption that other people should make certain major life decisions a certain way just because you feel that will make them happy sounds extremely presumptuous.

humans are animal and as such we have the instinct to procreate. Maybe this is not true for all humans but most of them will feel that urge. Natural selection works pretty well on this: the one that don't feel that urge will be less likely to procreate and so to pass their genes to the next generation.
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