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Living with an Unmarried Partner Now Common for Young Adults

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Re: Living with an Unmarried Partner Now Common for Young Adults

#51

Post by tptacek »

geff82 wrote: post #36
grogenaut wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how'd you learn the language? My wife and I are interested after a trip and competing a bit on the language. Immersion? or classes or what?

Well, it was Persian, the language of my wife. I learned it from books and by talking to her and the family. It is my fourth language. But we are also learning spanish now (courses in form of books), but it is too early to really mention it now.

Whoah, hold on. This is very relevant to my interests. I'm in Chicago and the next big thing I want to do is learn Farsi (my wife is taking Japanese classes, which is not very relevant to my interests, so I can't really do it with her). Is there a particular set of books you'd recommend?

I'm actually hoping to find some place to take classes.

Re: Living with an Unmarried Partner Now Common for Young Adults

#52

Post by brobdingnagians »

Marriage is hard, so is starting a company. But both are worth it and incredibly rewarding; you learn a lot and you experience things in married life that you can't in any other way. There is something about the lifelong commitment which changes things, and that is amazing to me.

Re: Living with an Unmarried Partner Now Common for Young Adults

#53

Post by garenp »

sheepmullet wrote: post #23

An interesting thought experiment: what would marriage have to be like to make marriage appealing again?

If there are no children involved, none of the current onerous obligations and financial ruin should apply. The government should not be able to intervene and ruin one persons life by making one party an economic slave to the other.

The gov't should not be able to be so asinine as to say something like "ability to pay does not affect obligation to pay" -- in other words when a (typically father) gets laid off or makes much less money, they will not lower his support payments to be in line with his new pay. This is how we get working, homeless men living in vans -- some of whom later kill themselves.

Re: Living with an Unmarried Partner Now Common for Young Adults

#55

Post by derefr »

civilian wrote: post #44
charlieflowers wrote: post #32

I have also heard that some people are now having sex outside of marriage.

(People have always had sex outside of marriage. If anything, the current generation is doing it with honest communication, rather than going behind their partner's back.)

If you're suggesting that as a justification for an assumed rise in rates of casual sex among youth, well, forget it: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex...

Re: Living with an Unmarried Partner Now Common for Young Adults

#56

Post by jdavis703 »

tptacek wrote: post #34
jdavis703 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would need to be as easy as starting or quitting a job. There also couldn't be pre-conditions around it such as a limit of two people, prohibitions on same-sex marriage, and bans on "adultery."

You are describing an arrangement totally unlike marriage. If you want termination-at-will, don't get married! If there is some social pressure to get married when you don't want to, that pressure is wrong; you should only get married when you're sure it's the right thing to do. On the other hand, at least in the US, there are huge numbers of people who fought for decades just to have the right to enter into the arra…

The idea is to get some of the government benefits of marriage without the overhead, i.e. the ability to make medical decisions and potentially lower tax rates depending on income situations.

Past generations of my family were prohibited from marriage because of race. It took a lot of rethinking of what marriage was for them to be granted those rights, ditto for LGBT people who just got those rights a few years ago in the US. There's still no reason why the current definition of marriage is the right definition.

Re: Living with an Unmarried Partner Now Common for Young Adults

#57

Post by derefr »

ravenstine wrote: post #42
sheepmullet wrote: post #23

An interesting thought experiment: what would marriage have to be like to make marriage appealing again?

Men and women would have to actually need each other for the contract to make sense. But, the toothpaste is out of the tube. I don't feel the need to get married because anything a wife can do, I can do with appliances and without breaking a sweat. Anything else can be supplemented by services. House dirty? My robot vacuum picks up a lot of the slack, and if I don't want to do the rest on my own, I can schedule a mai…

I think you're arguing in your first and second paragraphs against relationships, not marriage. The question is why marriage is declining within relationships.

Your third paragraph partially addresses that, but I disagree: effectively nobody is having weddings beyond their means, or feeling required by society to do so. Plenty of people have modest weddings, you just don't hear about them, because fewer people are invited to a small wedding than a big one, so there are fewer people who have been to a small wedding than a big one.

There are just some really rich people (or averagely-rich people with really rich extended families) who pay to have fancy weddings because they can.

Re: Living with an Unmarried Partner Now Common for Young Adults

#58

Post by mrkurt »

postsantum wrote: post #47
mrkurt wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wut. Since I've gotten married I've: * quit a job with nothing else lined up to try and start a company * moved cross country without a place to live * started boxing * learned improv and performed in shows * fostered a bunch of kids * learned to race rally cars In fact, the only thing I've done _less_ of is played video games.

Are you sure it's because of your marriage and not because you suddenly got a lot of free time?

I'm not sure how much of it is _because_ of my marriage, but I definitely don't have a ton of free time. Those have been pretty well spread over the whole adventure and we were actually on WIC/foodstamps when we had our first kid.

Re: Living with an Unmarried Partner Now Common for Young Adults

#59

Post by tptacek »

jdavis703 wrote: post #56
tptacek wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are describing an arrangement totally unlike marriage. If you want termination-at-will, don't get married! If there is some social pressure to get married when you don't want to, that pressure is wrong; you should only get married when you're sure it's the right thing to do. On the other hand, at least in the US, there are huge numbers of people who fought for decades just to have the right to enter into the arra…

The idea is to get some of the government benefits of marriage without the overhead, i.e. the ability to make medical decisions and potentially lower tax rates depending on income situations. Past generations of my family were prohibited from marriage because of race. It took a lot of rethinking of what marriage was for them to be granted those rights, ditto for LGBT people who just got those rights a few years ago i…

Can't you arrange to make medical decisions for each other without being married? Isn't that what an MPOA does? I'm not sure what tax benefits you're looking at but I believe we pay for the right to be married.

From a formal perspective, considering marriage as a (very old) legal and economic arrangement, and stripping it down to its essence (without any of the bullshit about it being a means to bring children into the world or express Judeo-Christian values), marriage is about durable interdependency. You agree to combine assets and opportunities, in order to maximize those opportunities jointly and to bear the costs of misfortune together.

Define marriage as an "at-will" arrangement dispenses with durability. A person in a transient marriage can't reasonably put their spouse through medical school, or help them start a company --- or, for that matter, raise children --- without an onerous set of additional contractual arrangements that would asymptotically approach what marriage already is.

Again: it's totally reasonable to want a long-term at-will relationship, and to seek one out. You don't have to get married.

Re: Living with an Unmarried Partner Now Common for Young Adults

#60

Post by ravenstine »

derefr wrote: post #57
ravenstine wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men and women would have to actually need each other for the contract to make sense. But, the toothpaste is out of the tube. I don't feel the need to get married because anything a wife can do, I can do with appliances and without breaking a sweat. Anything else can be supplemented by services. House dirty? My robot vacuum picks up a lot of the slack, and if I don't want to do the rest on my own, I can schedule a mai…

I think you're arguing in your first and second paragraphs against relationships , not marriage. The question is why marriage is declining within relationships . Your third paragraph partially addresses that, but I disagree: effectively nobody is having weddings beyond their means, or feeling required by society to do so. Plenty of people have modest weddings, you just don't hear about them, because fewer people are…

Yes, my arguments can apply to relationships, but they especially apply to marriage as the contract, both socially and legally, implies set of expectations. When those roles have been removed, why go through all the trouble? Relationships can still make sense in the face of role-obsolescence as people who don't need each other can still "Netflix n' chill." People can even cohabitate and serve no other purpose to each other besides non-platonic companionship. So at that point, why potentially ruin an already good thing?

> effectively nobody is having weddings beyond their means, or feeling required by society to do so

Our experiences differ significantly in that area. Even when it's within their means, it takes them a considerable amount of work to get there. For many, the outcome isn't worth the amount of effort.

Society isn't requiring people to get married, but that doesn't mean that people aren't subject to cultural expectations and peer pressure. As a perpetually single person, I am regularly asked by people whether I've "met that special woman yet." A person who gives more shits than I do would likely feel that they really ought to find that other person and "settle down", if you will. Society doesn't need requirements for people to do things in order to conform.

> There are just some really rich people (or averagely-rich people with really rich extended families) who pay to have fancy weddings because they can.

That, I never denied.

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