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You should also read part 2 of the article. After some relationships from 18-28 that all ended unhappy, I decided to screen my next partner in a very rational way. Of course I wanted romance and some attractiveness out of my next girlfriend, but I primarily wanted a friend that I could talk to when we were 95 and sitting in wheelchairs next to each other, unable to do much else. Destiny called and the girl I then met…
I like the way this article flips the commonplace 'What are the criteria for selecting my perfect mate?' to 'What are my motivations for getting married?'. However, it needs to be said that if and when children arrive on the scene, everything changes . So really, in my opinion, the predominant issue is 'Do I want to have children and how do I want them to be raised?'
I don't really fault people for taking decisions this way, but isn't this the opposite of how the decision should be made? I have a feeling that people would feel feel like they didn't really choose their partner if the main reason they decided to get married was to raise children.
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…
Absolutely not. It's her heart and mind that I fell in love with.
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..…
> listen to what people in NYC say about the dating scene there I live in NYC and think the dating scene here is fantastic, at least for someone in their 20s. There's lots of opportunity to meet interesting people and have fun together. This is going to sound silly, but one of my strongest reasons for preferring NYC to SF is the better dating scene.
im in the honeymoon phase right now. sometimes i get sad thinking about the transience of this phase of the relationship. obviously i shouldn't fixate on that, but it's like this creeping twilight that i wish i could just stave off forever. anyone have tips on doing this?
In my own marriage, every year to year-and-a-half, I've looked around and realized that we weren't as close as we used to be. We've had to rebuild the relationship, which takes work. It's been worth it, though - still being in the honeymoon phase at our 20th anniversary was pretty cool.
I mean, yes, the relationship also deepens and grows. The head-over-heels-in-love can last for a long time even while the relationship deepens, though...
Sounds great if you have lots of options. Some of us are getting older and haven't made it past anyone else's filter. At some point your will to just try and make it work regardless of the match.
The only place I think that really applies is if you're in a small town. If you can't get past the first few dates after trying with 10-20 candidates in a big city (requiring 100-200 solicitations), you're probably facing one of a few very solvable problems, off the top of my head: - fails at basic hygiene (solved by showers, haircuts, clothes, cleaning your room, home improvement projects, eating vegetables, etc) -…
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..…
To put it in terms that might be more familiar around here, obsessing over finding the right partner is like believing that a successful startup is mostly about finding the right idea. (And from there, it will just work out on its own...) Sure, some ideas are more likely to work out a priori, but your success is going to be dramatically influenced by the amount of work you're willing to put into it, your willingness…
Bear in mind that each part of the married couple will have decades of their own personal evolution occurring underneath the current of regular life. Opinions, beliefs, or attitudes that are strongly held at the time of marriage will change. Even if you meet the Perfect Mate (TM), no one stays static for long.
Marriage, like all family living, requires a great deal of mutual toleration and patience, and a considerable amount of individual flexibility and adaptation.
The Perfect Couple will fall apart in short order if they are not willing to dedicate serious effort to their relationship on a perpetual basis. Marital success has little to do with the starting material.
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For these reasons among others, I like the cultural ideal of arranged marriages. They make it clear that marriage is about the commitment itself more than it's about the personality on either side of the equation.
I also believe that most of the parents or grandparents in a position to make the arrangements would have better character judgment than the much-younger people trying to select a good spousal candidate on their own (as above, "good spousal candidate" is someone eager and happy to work for a strong marriage).
In some sense, it is irresponsible of the older and wiser generations to offload this duty into the hands of those who have great difficulty wielding it. And while I don't believe these arrangements should be compulsory, I think we'd all be better off if this was the common practice.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We fall in love with the person that brings happiness and joy to our life by merely spending time together. If you need to spend time with someone in order to have happiness and joy in your life, you have a problem to solve before you even think about love and dating.
Many people do have a need to be loved, you can't argue it away.
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..…
What does getting married, have to do with sharing your early adulthood with a person?
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"?
But I'm guessing that even those people who don't want children are following the rules of natural selection. "Only the fittest will survive" is then translated to something like "only the genes of those who want to pass on their genomic data will survive".
[1] People have free will after all.