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Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person

nytimes.com

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Re: Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person

#91

Post by swagasaurus-rex »

> For most of recorded history, people married for logical sorts of reasons: because her parcel of land adjoined yours, his family had a flourishing business, her father was the magistrate in town, there was a castle to keep up, or both sets of parents subscribed to the same interpretation of a holy text. And from such reasonable marriages, there flowed loneliness, infidelity, abuse, hardness of heart and screams heard through the nursery doors. The marriage of reason was not, in hindsight, reasonable at all; it was often expedient, narrow-minded, snobbish and exploitative.

I hear this opinion everywhere, and I'm curious to see if there's any bearing to this idea. As far as I'm concerned, loneliness, infidelity, abuse, hardness of heart all occur with some regularity despite marrying for romantic reasons.

Re: Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person

#92

Post by xirdstl »

yeahmaybe wrote: post #71
xirdstl wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't agree with his opening premise of what everybody wants, so I couldn't finish reading.

Do you only read articles you agree with? That sounds like a strong case of confirmation bias. Besides, the core of the article does not reflect an elaboration of that paragraph, you should give it a try.

No, I read tons I disagree with. I didn't do well to elaborate on my objection in my original comment. Beginning an article with strong sweeping generalizations that are obviously not true is likely to turn me off, and it did in this case.

Re: Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person

#93

Post by jkestner »

o_____________o wrote: post #8
busterarm wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But at the same time I feel like this is an accurate summation of the problem and contains solid advice. This was a good read. I think getting good data on this would be impossible. Unfortunately it would involve including peoples' opinions and perceptions on events and we're amazing animals at misunderstandings and self-deceptions. Who knows if the purported reason actually has anything to do with it and isn't just…

Agree, this is the wisdom I wish someone drilled into me when I was young and lusty. We got indoctrinated early into romanticism by every song and Disney cartoon. It's myopic. Ain't no r&b ballads about marriage doldrums.

Makes me wonder if fans of Fountains of Wayne statistically have better marriages.

Re: Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person

#94

Post by kazinator »

nostrademons wrote: post #18
kazinator wrote: post #5

> The good news is that it doesn’t matter if we find we have married the wrong person. Yes, it does! OMG, this so laughably wrong. (The whole article.) Who you marry is a big, big determiner of happiness. It's better to be single than to marry the wrong person.

That line is speaking at a different level than your response. The point - which the article goes on to elaborate on in the next few paragraphs - is that happiness is a choice , not a consequence . Every person is going to have flaws, and they will have little quirks that drive you nuts. Whether the relationship succeeds or not depends on how you react to those flaws. Do disagreements spiral out of control, with each…

Of course "right person" doesn't mean "flawless person"!

That is a complete strawman.

> you should own your emotions instead of letting them own you.

Those who let their emotions own them are the ones who tend settle for the wrong person. "Sure he drinks, spends money like crazy and flirts with every beautiful woman he sees ... but I LOVE him".

Re: Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person

#95

Post by kazinator »

refurb wrote: post #10
kazinator wrote: post #5

> The good news is that it doesn’t matter if we find we have married the wrong person. Yes, it does! OMG, this so laughably wrong. (The whole article.) Who you marry is a big, big determiner of happiness. It's better to be single than to marry the wrong person.

I think what the author was trying to say is that every person is the wrong person to marry if you judge them by your expectations of what they should bring to the relationship.

Even if that is true, we can somehow rank the wrongs on a scale and go with the least wrong.

Re: Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person

#96

Post by dctoedt »

rayiner wrote: post #76
fizzbatter wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you're downvoted. I suppose you're not contributing too much to the conversation, and it seems a little sarcastic (or something), but i often feel not having kids is a forgotten option. My SO and I chose long ago not to have kids (independently, fwiw), and people often look at us like we have two heads (.. each, heh).

Not having kids is an extremely common option that's growing in popularity. It's also incompatible with the modern welfare state as currently structured.

> Not having kids is an extremely common option that's growing in popularity. It's also incompatible with the modern welfare state as currently structured.

I've wondered whether we might be seeing a new division of labor emerging: An increasing number of educated professionals elect to have few or none of the kids needed for the next generation of workers, while some lower-income people take up the slack by having lots of kids. This might actually be a sustainable social model, but it would require two things: (1) "Talent," however you choose to define that, needs to appear in sufficient numbers of children born to low-income parents and not just in children born to educated professionals --- my guess is that this is indeed the case; (2) crucially, society must be able to provide the infrastructure needed to raise children to productive citizenship, especially when some of these children are being raised by parents who don't personally have access to the necessary financial- and other resources --- and that's very much only a partially-solved problem.

Re: Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person

#97

Post by nostrademons »

kazinator wrote: post #94
nostrademons wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That line is speaking at a different level than your response. The point - which the article goes on to elaborate on in the next few paragraphs - is that happiness is a choice , not a consequence . Every person is going to have flaws, and they will have little quirks that drive you nuts. Whether the relationship succeeds or not depends on how you react to those flaws. Do disagreements spiral out of control, with each…

Of course "right person" doesn't mean "flawless person"! That is a complete strawman. > you should own your emotions instead of letting them own you. Those who let their emotions own them are the ones who tend settle for the wrong person. "Sure he drinks, spends money like crazy and flirts with every beautiful woman he sees ... but I LOVE him".

I think, then, that you and the article are talking past each other. There's nothing in the article that says one should settle for he who "drinks, spends money like crazy, and flirts with every beautiful woman he sees". The examples given are "The failure of one particular partner to save us from our grief and melancholy is not an argument against that person" and "The person who is best suited to us is not the person who shares our every taste (he or she doesn’t exist), but the person who can negotiate differences in taste intelligently", neither of which I see as particularly big sins.

Indeed, I'm a bit baffled by the commenters (in this subthread and elsewhere) that are interpreting the article's main point as "have no standards". It is not contradictory to have high standards and also realize that no partner is going to complete us or make us happy all the time. It just means realizing that momentary unhappiness is a part of life, and that it's worth forgiving the little things if the big things are in place.

Re: Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person

#99

Post by milcron »

xirdstl wrote: post #92
yeahmaybe wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you only read articles you agree with? That sounds like a strong case of confirmation bias. Besides, the core of the article does not reflect an elaboration of that paragraph, you should give it a try.

No, I read tons I disagree with. I didn't do well to elaborate on my objection in my original comment. Beginning an article with strong sweeping generalizations that are obviously not true is likely to turn me off, and it did in this case.

For what it's worth, the rest of the article delves into the "but"s and why a worldview corresponding to the initial paragraph isn't a realistic one.

Re: Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person

#100

Post by anotherevan »

Authenticity and communication I personally think are the two most important traits for a successful relationship.

If you don't feel like you can be your real self in front of that person, unable to share with each other your dreams, fantasies, desires, fears, faults and foibles, it is going to be difficult to build a relationship that can last.

I’ve been married twenty-one years, and neither of us are the same two people who got married all that time ago. There have been times when we’ve discussed if the two people we’ve become should stay married. There’s been times when love is strained, times when things are just comfortable, and times when my heart still beats faster when she walks in the room.

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