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How to Pick Your Life Partner (2014)

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Re: How to Pick Your Life Partner (2014)

#111

Post by peterwwillis »

asdf33323 wrote: post #24
peterwwillis wrote: post #17

> But good old society frowns upon that, and people are often still timid to say they met their spouse on a dating site. The respectable way to meet a life partner is by dumb luck, by bumping into them randomly or being introduced to them from within your little pool. Well, yeah. This is how social networks work: similar people group together, people socialize within that group, and they match with people who they ar…

Most peoples "social circle" is very, very small. Think about the number of eligible women (or men) within your circle - it can probably be counted on 2 hands. Are you sure you want to limit your selection of something as important as a forever partner?

Network, not circle. The term 'social circle' isn't really well defined, so I'll define it as "people with whom you have social interaction with on a regular or semi-regular basis". A social network is anyone they are connected to, and them to them, etc. Your social network is much larger than a social circle. Think six degrees of kevin bacon.

In order to dramatically grow a social network you might only need to make friends with 1 person who is outside your normal social network. For example, if you joined a gym and made friends with one person whom you then played squash with every week, and that person is otherwise unconnected to anyone else you know, now there is at least a plausible chance to meet any of the people in their social network. I'm no expert here, but surely someone at Facebook can give an example of how adding a new friend who isn't in your normal group of friends can drastically increase your connections.

If you can use this social network effectively, you have (I think) a much better chance of finding a lifetime partner than using a dating site, both because of how difficult it is to identify an appealing personality online, and because social network connections are (I think) much better paths to a potential match.

Re: How to Pick Your Life Partner (2014)

#112

Post by cookiecaper »

gehwartzen wrote: post #103
mikebenfield wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't seem to understand the difference between a proposition and its converse. "If a person wants to get married, s/he wants to share his/her life with someone" is (more or less) true, and is the premise everyone is working under. The converse of that proposition is "If a person wants to share his/her life with someone, s/he wants to get married." That is what you for some reason appear to believe is the premise…

I don't think he is trying to state the converse of your original quote. Seems clear all he is saying is that you can share your life with someone regardless of being married. You can live with a boyfriend/girlfriend and experience sharing life all the same without the religious or legal institution of marriage. Unless the assertion is that things like filing taxes together somehow prevent this

This is an intentionally obtuse perspective. Marriage is a significant social institution in a way that a mere interpersonal commitment can never be, because marriage is a commitment with a third entity: the community at large.

The social structure accepts and enforces the marital union, providing significant legal protection to itself, the children, and the married partners.

This grants a solid staying power, borne of the subconscious knowledge that no party can really "just leave" and be done with it. This staying power should not be underestimated; it is effective and real regardless of how little one believes they will need to rely on it.

Re: How to Pick Your Life Partner (2014)

#113

Post by chrisseaton »

greenshackle2 wrote: post #109
chrisseaton wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's lots of opportunity to meet people, but I think the point is do those people want to settle down? Or do they want to keep meeting more interesting people? When people want a good dating scene they don't want to keep dating - they want successful dating, meaning a relationship.

That... really depends who you ask.

Well the context of this discussion is marriage, so I was meaning people looking for that. Is the dating scene ideal for that.

Re: How to Pick Your Life Partner (2014)

#114

Post by fizixer »

debaserab2 wrote: post #82
fizixer wrote: post #46

Marriage, monogamy, and (romantic) love are conservative notions that are close to being (or should be) marginalized in my opinion. Romantic love, especially, is an extremely superficial and hollow idea exalted to high heavens by the group-think of the masses. I gave up religion, and over the years realized that love is the second, way more sneaky and no less damaging, delusion that humanity indulges in. It has to go…

> I hope most of you would agree that at least 70%-90% of being in love has something to do with the appearance of your person-of-interest (most of it visual). No matter how you cut it, no matter how much of an intellectual you are and how much you prefer to connect deeply with a person, in the end, given two individuals, you fall in love with the one that is more visually attractive No, I don't agree with that even…

Thought experiment:

Imagine you are not dependent on your current partner in any way. You are financially stable (let's say you a multi-millionaire). Either you don't have kids or if you do, somehow they're not dependent on you (or something).

Now think of your favorite media personalities that you have a crush on, and imagine one of them meets you in person and takes an elevated level of interest in you.

If you don't have any celebrity crushes and that there is no one in the world you find more attractive than your current partner, I give up.

If there is, would you be tempted to cheat? If not, I give up.

If yes, I rest my case.

Re: How to Pick Your Life Partner (2014)

#115

Post by Danihan »

notyourday wrote: post #110
mikebenfield wrote: post #8

1. I have always hated the notion that having a happy marriage is about filtering through many candidates to find the one perfect partner. Although I do think it's reasonable to try to learn early on what you're looking for, this idea that we should all be dramatically expanding our dating pool to find the perfect person is abominable. Look at a city with a massive population of eligible young people, like say NYC..…

> Look at a city with a massive population of eligible young people, like say NYC.. and then listen to what people in NYC say about the dating scene there. It's not pretty. Having such a huge pool of potential mates discourages people from committing. In other words, it makes it harder to find a long term mate, and it makes you less satisfied with whoever you're seeing. I disagree, this just means you are not optimiz…

Are you married, or in a long-term partnership?

Re: How to Pick Your Life Partner (2014)

#116

Post by cJ0th »

geff82 wrote: post #32
mikebenfield wrote: post #8

1. I have always hated the notion that having a happy marriage is about filtering through many candidates to find the one perfect partner. Although I do think it's reasonable to try to learn early on what you're looking for, this idea that we should all be dramatically expanding our dating pool to find the perfect person is abominable. Look at a city with a massive population of eligible young people, like say NYC..…

>> I have always hated the notion that having a happy marriage is about filtering through many candidates to find the one perfect partner. Dating is no machine learning where you need a large sample to get it right. It is rather taking the looking glass focussing on what fits for you.

Satisficing, not optimizing. gotcha! ;)

Re: How to Pick Your Life Partner (2014)

#117

Post by gehwartzen »

Mahn wrote: post #77
fizixer wrote: post #46

Marriage, monogamy, and (romantic) love are conservative notions that are close to being (or should be) marginalized in my opinion. Romantic love, especially, is an extremely superficial and hollow idea exalted to high heavens by the group-think of the masses. I gave up religion, and over the years realized that love is the second, way more sneaky and no less damaging, delusion that humanity indulges in. It has to go…

Respectfully, your argument doesn't hold water because it doesn't look like you understand what being/falling in love is. Sexual attraction is 70%-90% visual appearances and mostly biological, but falling in love is not about sexual urges, it's about happiness. We fall in love with the person that brings happiness and joy to our life by merely spending time together, not necessarily the one we want to ram our genital…

Exactly. I love my sister, mother, a few of my best male friends, and my wife. Love doesn't equate wanting to have sex with someone. Most humans happen to enjoy sex so given the proposition of commiting to a single person sexual attraction (hence visual attraction) becomes an important factor.

Re: How to Pick Your Life Partner (2014)

#118

Post by cousin_it »

fizixer wrote: post #98
cousin_it wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people do have a need to be loved, you can't argue it away.

Most people have plenty of issues growing up, like low self-esteem, need for validation, etc. A combination of training, therapy, meditation, sense-of-purpose, etc can work wonders.

One such issue is nihilism, the kind you're showing here. Growing out of it often makes people happier, unlike growing out of love.

Re: How to Pick Your Life Partner (2014)

#119

Post by ezrast »

bllguo wrote: post #57
bananabill wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately most people are still stuck in the mindset that everyone who isn't broken inside wants children. I've never wanted children at any point in my life, but I'm wrong apparently.

But from a biological/evolutionary/whatever perspective, isn't not wanting children definitely "wrong"?

If we were completely asocial, independent creatures, then perhaps. But humans - and therefore their genes - have always lived and died in groups, and even a primitive tribe may stand to benefit from having a small amount of individuals unburdened by child-rearing. From the point of view of the gene, what's important is only that some part of the family tree propagates; the number of dead-end branches doesn't matter. Therefore an increase in reproductive drive could easily be deleterious to a particular gene's long-term survival.

Disclaimer: I have no knowledge of the role of child-free individuals in our era of evolutionary adaptedness. I'm just pointing out that evolutionary dynamics are a lot more nuanced than "more children = good", especially in social animals.

Re: How to Pick Your Life Partner (2014)

#120

Post by peterwwillis »

vilmosi wrote: post #73
peterwwillis wrote: post #17

> But good old society frowns upon that, and people are often still timid to say they met their spouse on a dating site. The respectable way to meet a life partner is by dumb luck, by bumping into them randomly or being introduced to them from within your little pool. Well, yeah. This is how social networks work: similar people group together, people socialize within that group, and they match with people who they ar…

> And so, after eliminating all choices from one's existing in-person social network, people with bad social networking skills look for dates on the internet. What, no. That's not the kind of people using online dating. There's people who intentionally want to meet people outside their friends' group (for obvious reasons). Then there's people who use Uber despite the fact they have a friend who has a car. It's easier…

My bad. I meant to say "look for a lifetime partner", not just "look for dates".
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