OT: Founder of eHarmony says, "On Second Thought, Don't Get Married."
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OT: Founder of eHarmony says, "On Second Thought, Don't Get Married."
More than 2 million couples will get married in the United States this year alone. Several hundred thousand of these couples should reconsider, postpone their weddings or not get married.
Shocking new statistics released recently by the U.S. Census Bureau suggest that Americans may no longer need marriage. For the first time ever, fewer than half of the households in the United States are married couples. In the past decade, the number of unmarried couples increased 25 percent as more people chose to cohabitate. A Pew Research Center study last year put it more succinctly, finding an increasing number of Americans now believes marriage is "becoming obsolete."
This is a dangerous conclusion. It's true that far too many marriages, as currently constructed, end up disastrously. But with some common sense societal changes at the front end, marriage can still serve a vital purpose for a vast majority of adults.
Interestingly, around the same time the Pew study came out, the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, in their annual report on the health of marriage and family life, affirmed that more than three-quarters of Americans still believe marriage is "important" and that more than 70 percent of adults under age 30 desire to marry someday.
So it's clear that a majority of us still crave to be married. It's like we are hard wired to search after that person with whom we can spend the rest of our lives -- even in the face of these dire marital statistics.
I'm not trying to say that marriage is not in trouble. I am trying to say that there are some clear answers to the question of how marriage can get uniformly more satisfying for the people involved. And this I firmly believe: When done right, marriage can be the greatest institution on earth.
In his best-selling book, The Social Animal, New York Times columnist David Brooks says that "by far the most important decisions that persons will ever make are about whom to marry, and whom to befriend, what to love and what to despise, and how to control impulses." He cites multiple studies that have found a strong correlation between the stability of good relationships and increased life happiness.
But the skill of choosing a marriage partner has often been treated as relatively unimportant in our society and a whole lot less complex than it actually is. And herein lies the secret of why marriage has often turned out so disappointingly for so many.
It's frighteningly easy to choose the wrong person. Attraction and chemistry are easily mistaken for love, but they are far from the same thing. Being attracted to someone is immediate and largely subconscious. Staying deeply in love with someone happens gradually and requires conscious decisions, made over and over again, for a lifetime. Too many people choose to get married based on attraction and don't consider, or have enough perspective to recognize, whether their love can endure.
When people choose a partner unwisely, it's a source of enormous eventual pain. During my 35-year clinical career, I "presided over" the divorces of several hundred couples. I never experienced a single easy one. If one or both partners didn't get clobbered by the experience, any children involved often felt deep emotional sadness and loss. Sometimes this sadness kept impacting these people for years -- even decades.
A significant amount of research data, including an in-depth report by the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values, buttresses my clinical impressions that parental divorce (or failure to marry) appears to increase children's risk of dropping out of high school. Moreover, children whose parents divorce have higher rates of psychological problems and other mental illnesses. And ultimately, divorce begets divorce; i.e., when you grow up outside an intact marriage, you have a greater likelihood of having children outside a marriage or getting a divorce yourself.
I have often suggested that more pain in our society comes from broken primary relationships than from any other source. If we could ever reduce the incidence of marital breakup from 40 to 50 percent of all marriages to single digits, I suspect it would be one of the greatest accomplishments of our time.
Of course, no one intends to be in an unhappy marriage. Bad marriages don't just happen to bad people. They mostly happen to good people who are not good for each other.
And inspiring marriages don't happen by accident. They require highly informed and carefully reasoned choices. Commitment and hard work are factors too. But after decades of working with a few thousand well-intended and hardworking married people, I've become convinced that 75 percent of what culminates in a disappointing marriage -- or a great marriage -- has far less to do with hard work and far more to do with partner selection based on "broad-based compatibility." It became clear to me that signs which were predictive of the huge differences between eventually disappointing and ultimately great marriages were obvious during the premarital phase of relationships.
When two people have a relationship which is predicated upon broad-based compatibility, there is every reason to be optimistic about their long term prospects. A marriage of this type has virtually no chance of becoming "obsolete."
If all of us together can focus on the challenge of getting the right persons married to each other, it just might change our society more than anything else we could do. Goodness knows, when marriage is right, little else matters nearly so much.
Dr. Neil Clark Warren is founder of eHarmony and chairman of its Board of Directors. eHarmony is an online dating website grounded in relationship science that matches single men and women for long-term relationships.
Shocking new statistics released recently by the U.S. Census Bureau suggest that Americans may no longer need marriage. For the first time ever, fewer than half of the households in the United States are married couples. In the past decade, the number of unmarried couples increased 25 percent as more people chose to cohabitate. A Pew Research Center study last year put it more succinctly, finding an increasing number of Americans now believes marriage is "becoming obsolete."
This is a dangerous conclusion. It's true that far too many marriages, as currently constructed, end up disastrously. But with some common sense societal changes at the front end, marriage can still serve a vital purpose for a vast majority of adults.
Interestingly, around the same time the Pew study came out, the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, in their annual report on the health of marriage and family life, affirmed that more than three-quarters of Americans still believe marriage is "important" and that more than 70 percent of adults under age 30 desire to marry someday.
So it's clear that a majority of us still crave to be married. It's like we are hard wired to search after that person with whom we can spend the rest of our lives -- even in the face of these dire marital statistics.
I'm not trying to say that marriage is not in trouble. I am trying to say that there are some clear answers to the question of how marriage can get uniformly more satisfying for the people involved. And this I firmly believe: When done right, marriage can be the greatest institution on earth.
In his best-selling book, The Social Animal, New York Times columnist David Brooks says that "by far the most important decisions that persons will ever make are about whom to marry, and whom to befriend, what to love and what to despise, and how to control impulses." He cites multiple studies that have found a strong correlation between the stability of good relationships and increased life happiness.
But the skill of choosing a marriage partner has often been treated as relatively unimportant in our society and a whole lot less complex than it actually is. And herein lies the secret of why marriage has often turned out so disappointingly for so many.
It's frighteningly easy to choose the wrong person. Attraction and chemistry are easily mistaken for love, but they are far from the same thing. Being attracted to someone is immediate and largely subconscious. Staying deeply in love with someone happens gradually and requires conscious decisions, made over and over again, for a lifetime. Too many people choose to get married based on attraction and don't consider, or have enough perspective to recognize, whether their love can endure.
When people choose a partner unwisely, it's a source of enormous eventual pain. During my 35-year clinical career, I "presided over" the divorces of several hundred couples. I never experienced a single easy one. If one or both partners didn't get clobbered by the experience, any children involved often felt deep emotional sadness and loss. Sometimes this sadness kept impacting these people for years -- even decades.
A significant amount of research data, including an in-depth report by the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values, buttresses my clinical impressions that parental divorce (or failure to marry) appears to increase children's risk of dropping out of high school. Moreover, children whose parents divorce have higher rates of psychological problems and other mental illnesses. And ultimately, divorce begets divorce; i.e., when you grow up outside an intact marriage, you have a greater likelihood of having children outside a marriage or getting a divorce yourself.
I have often suggested that more pain in our society comes from broken primary relationships than from any other source. If we could ever reduce the incidence of marital breakup from 40 to 50 percent of all marriages to single digits, I suspect it would be one of the greatest accomplishments of our time.
Of course, no one intends to be in an unhappy marriage. Bad marriages don't just happen to bad people. They mostly happen to good people who are not good for each other.
And inspiring marriages don't happen by accident. They require highly informed and carefully reasoned choices. Commitment and hard work are factors too. But after decades of working with a few thousand well-intended and hardworking married people, I've become convinced that 75 percent of what culminates in a disappointing marriage -- or a great marriage -- has far less to do with hard work and far more to do with partner selection based on "broad-based compatibility." It became clear to me that signs which were predictive of the huge differences between eventually disappointing and ultimately great marriages were obvious during the premarital phase of relationships.
When two people have a relationship which is predicated upon broad-based compatibility, there is every reason to be optimistic about their long term prospects. A marriage of this type has virtually no chance of becoming "obsolete."
If all of us together can focus on the challenge of getting the right persons married to each other, it just might change our society more than anything else we could do. Goodness knows, when marriage is right, little else matters nearly so much.
Dr. Neil Clark Warren is founder of eHarmony and chairman of its Board of Directors. eHarmony is an online dating website grounded in relationship science that matches single men and women for long-term relationships.
Last edited by Seren; 07-08-2011 at 06:24 AM. Reason: Added OT to the thread title.
I'm no angel!
Join Date: May 2005
Location: tampa, fl
Posts: 6,728
Thank you for posting this. All good points.
For me, I am done with the marrying thing. I personally have no reason to. I am financially secure, will not be having any children, however, the real bottom line is that I have a bad picker, and it is sooo much easier to leave a person that you are not financially strapped to. Unfortunately, when one gets divorced the court looks at it as financial situation, how to split up the assets, and who gets the children, that's it, the emotional part of the relationship has no bearing. So, in essance, to me, marriage ends up being a financial arrangement/entanglement.
Believe me, I am not against marriage, it is just not for me.
For me, I am done with the marrying thing. I personally have no reason to. I am financially secure, will not be having any children, however, the real bottom line is that I have a bad picker, and it is sooo much easier to leave a person that you are not financially strapped to. Unfortunately, when one gets divorced the court looks at it as financial situation, how to split up the assets, and who gets the children, that's it, the emotional part of the relationship has no bearing. So, in essance, to me, marriage ends up being a financial arrangement/entanglement.
Believe me, I am not against marriage, it is just not for me.
Member
Join Date: Nov 2007
Posts: 1,294
Great article.
All controversies aside, the main point of broad-based compatibilities is hard to argue against.
It's really unfortunate that our mass media culture supports many aspects that are destructive to relationships - fantasy thinking, quick & shallow solutions, valuing looks/hotness/money over character/values/life skills. (We seek the "hot" or "status" partner rather than the one who makes sound decisions, etc.)
It takes work, and time, to learn of a potential partner's value system, problem solving methods, family of origin structure and culture, character profile.
And woe, to those of us who don't!
CLMI
All controversies aside, the main point of broad-based compatibilities is hard to argue against.
It's really unfortunate that our mass media culture supports many aspects that are destructive to relationships - fantasy thinking, quick & shallow solutions, valuing looks/hotness/money over character/values/life skills. (We seek the "hot" or "status" partner rather than the one who makes sound decisions, etc.)
It takes work, and time, to learn of a potential partner's value system, problem solving methods, family of origin structure and culture, character profile.
And woe, to those of us who don't!
CLMI
May it be
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: A new day. Today I just see bright colors, in the small world of my dreams.
Posts: 384
I have an aunt ~ I rem. saying ~ when she started to date, he has to like to dance. They are still dancing almost for 50 yrs. This is dedicated to their latest (this spring) Hawaiian trip ~ 
(among other things she was attracted to, an extremely kind, a true gentleman, thoughtful, helpful, her best friend.) Thinking back to my going out to dance times...(rem all the women dancing with each other) yep there weren't too many men that Really liked to dance & none that I have been with. Most of them self centered - around a bar. I got this all A** backwards. I'm part of the group that --
For the first time ever, fewer than half of the households in the United States are married couples. In the past decade, the number of unmarried couples increased 25 percent as more people chose to cohabitate. (or stay happily single) get with the program.
75 percent of what culminates in a disappointing marriage -- or a great marriage -- has far less to do with hard work and far more to do with partner selection based on "broad-based compatibility." It became clear to me that signs which were predictive of the huge differences between eventually disappointing and ultimately great marriages were obvious during the premarital phase of relationships.
If all of us together can focus on the challenge of getting the right persons married to each other, it just might change our society more than anything else we could do. Goodness knows, when marriage is right, little else matters nearly so much.
If we could ever reduce the incidence of marital breakup from 40 to 50 percent of all marriages to single digits, I suspect it would be one of the greatest accomplishments of our time.
I think we could have that percent dropped to single digits, to begin with -- if we all just waited for an Uncle Jerry.
(among other things she was attracted to, an extremely kind, a true gentleman, thoughtful, helpful, her best friend.) Thinking back to my going out to dance times...(rem all the women dancing with each other) yep there weren't too many men that Really liked to dance & none that I have been with. Most of them self centered - around a bar. I got this all A** backwards. I'm part of the group that -- For the first time ever, fewer than half of the households in the United States are married couples. In the past decade, the number of unmarried couples increased 25 percent as more people chose to cohabitate. (or stay happily single) get with the program.
75 percent of what culminates in a disappointing marriage -- or a great marriage -- has far less to do with hard work and far more to do with partner selection based on "broad-based compatibility." It became clear to me that signs which were predictive of the huge differences between eventually disappointing and ultimately great marriages were obvious during the premarital phase of relationships.
If all of us together can focus on the challenge of getting the right persons married to each other, it just might change our society more than anything else we could do. Goodness knows, when marriage is right, little else matters nearly so much.
If we could ever reduce the incidence of marital breakup from 40 to 50 percent of all marriages to single digits, I suspect it would be one of the greatest accomplishments of our time.
I think we could have that percent dropped to single digits, to begin with -- if we all just waited for an Uncle Jerry.
Member
Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Ashland Oregon
Posts: 256
This was an interesting article - I didn't realize that the founder of eHarmony was a therapist! And I have an addendum: it doesn't matter if all the broad-based compatibilities are in place if there is abuse, insanity or addiction involved.
- Sylvie
- Sylvie
Member
Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: chicago, IL
Posts: 64
Interesting post. I come from a divorced home, but the rest of my extended family have, for the most part, stayed married. I am married myself, though I haven't been consistently happy about it, basically for the entire time.
I'm not sure if I have an opinion about this one way or other for society at large, but I wonder if people shouldn't get married later in life. People change in their 20s, and even their early 30s quite a bit. It seems like folks mid-30s and older are pretty much who they are, and are more comfortable with being themselves.
The issue is having children. It's obviously best for kids to grow up in a 2-parent household, and it's that biological drive for procreation that is the catalyst for many marriages in the first place (conscious or unconscious).
To summarize, I don't have the answers. But I can tell you this much for myself: if my marriage doesn't make it, I won't ever do it again. Ever.
I'm not sure if I have an opinion about this one way or other for society at large, but I wonder if people shouldn't get married later in life. People change in their 20s, and even their early 30s quite a bit. It seems like folks mid-30s and older are pretty much who they are, and are more comfortable with being themselves.
The issue is having children. It's obviously best for kids to grow up in a 2-parent household, and it's that biological drive for procreation that is the catalyst for many marriages in the first place (conscious or unconscious).
To summarize, I don't have the answers. But I can tell you this much for myself: if my marriage doesn't make it, I won't ever do it again. Ever.
Present
Join Date: Apr 2011
Location: "Happy Rock" (Gladstone) Oregon
Posts: 1,252
Benjamin Franklin said, and I paraphrase, "Go into marriage with your eyes wide open. Once you're married, keep them shut."
I just don't have a broad, generalized opinion of it. Like with everything else, it's up to the individual to figure it out.
I know I didn't intend to be married 3x.
I waited 'til I was 29 to get married the first time, thinking that would be late enough. In retrospect, I was still too young.
The second marriage, I have no idea what I was thinking. If I could take back one thing in my life, the second marriage is #1 on the list of Things To Undo. Subheader A to that, reads, "Meeting 2nd husband."
My AH and I "lived in sin" "shacked up" "cohabitated" "did separate taxes at the same residence or claimed HOH and dependant, as warranted by tax laws" for six years before we got married.
I just don't have a broad, generalized opinion of it. Like with everything else, it's up to the individual to figure it out.
I know I didn't intend to be married 3x.
I waited 'til I was 29 to get married the first time, thinking that would be late enough. In retrospect, I was still too young.
The second marriage, I have no idea what I was thinking. If I could take back one thing in my life, the second marriage is #1 on the list of Things To Undo. Subheader A to that, reads, "Meeting 2nd husband."
My AH and I "lived in sin" "shacked up" "cohabitated" "did separate taxes at the same residence or claimed HOH and dependant, as warranted by tax laws" for six years before we got married.
Present
Join Date: Apr 2011
Location: "Happy Rock" (Gladstone) Oregon
Posts: 1,252
Originally Posted by Seenet 
To summarize, I don't have the answers. But I can tell you this much for myself: if my marriage doesn't make it, I won't ever do it again. Ever.
A work in progress
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: South Jersey
Posts: 16,633
A couple of years ago, just out of curiosity, I took the eHarmony questionnaire. You fill out a battery (honest, it's like an hour to answer all the questions) of questions that supposedly will pair you with people with whom you are likely to have that "broad based compatibility." (Sorry, I thought his article read like an ad for the dating service.)
So after answering this zillion and one questions, as honestly as I possibly could, what were the results? NOBODY is my match. That's right, not one single male in their (presumably humongous) data base is compatible with me.
Guess it's a good thing I'm on indefinite hiatus from dating, huh? Talk about terminally UNIQUE!
So after answering this zillion and one questions, as honestly as I possibly could, what were the results? NOBODY is my match. That's right, not one single male in their (presumably humongous) data base is compatible with me.
Guess it's a good thing I'm on indefinite hiatus from dating, huh? Talk about terminally UNIQUE!
Member
Join Date: Feb 2011
Posts: 141
I have always been afraid of marriage. When I think of calling someone my husband or being called someone's wife, I cringe. There's just this picture in my head of married people being bored with each other, unhappy, restless that scares the crap out of me! If I'm going to be with someone I want to be in love! I want to have great sex, be excited by the other person, love them unconditionally! The idea of life being so comfortable and routine that you have to schedule time for sex sounds like a death sentence to me.
But then again, I'm not married
Panther
But then again, I'm not married
Panther
Member
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: new state
Posts: 137
Really interesting, Transform! I’m glad you posted this.
One thing I’ve thought about in this vein is the arranged marriage concept. I have a friend in her 50’s who has an arranged marriage and had a work colleague who’s about 40 who also has an arranged marriage- both are from India. I certainly don’t mean to say that arranged marriage is some kind of panacea!! However, there is an element in these women’s cases that worked very well- CERTAINLY better than my selecting process did. And it tracks what Warren is saying about broad-based compatibility. Their parents picked their mates based on the values and compatibility of the families. They picked men from families with the same religion, and the same or similar educational levels, socio-economic expectations and aspirations, values, work ethic, social and political perspectives, as well as how the potential mate’s parents raised their children, allocated money, and acted toward each other.
If my parents had selected my mates on these bases, broad-based compatibilities, and if I had seen the value in it (pretty big “if”), I NEVER would have married or even dated the men I did!! (Maybe one XBF, but he turned out to be an A, and my parents didn’t like him. But they liked his mom and our families were similar). But overall, my parents did NOT like my H’s parents, and then after the (foreseeable?) divorce, my subsequent BFs’ parents. My partners’ parents didn’t like my parents either (with that one exception), so these relationships wouldn’t have been approved by either side.
What wouldn’t have happened if we had had a tradition of arranged marriage and family involvement is that my parents would not have kept their mouths shut and been polite, and I would have expected their input and respected it. On those kinds of data-based parameters, only one of my partners’ mothers was at all like my mom, and none of the fathers were like my dad. The differences in backgrounds and values were great. No family glee or endorsement on either side, much less cooperation.
Another positive about the two arranged marriages I’ve seen is that the “behind-closed-doors” risk is lower. In those two cases, the couples’ parents and extended families are far more interactive and involved and so there was lower risk that arranged husbands and wives could go way off the tracks (like with addiction, abuse, infidelity, addressing mental illness or immaturity and irresponsibility), thereby putting the children and family unit at risk, without their parents and extended family knowing and intervening, even meeting and cooperating in problem solving. One of those two marriages did face a crisis like that, and the weight of it didn’t fall solely on an isolated and fearful spouse (huge advantage), and instead both sides of the family (who already shared values and compatibility themselves) just matter-of-factly rallied and took on the issue, which was solved. I know it doesn’t always work this well, but it does work in some cases and it’s instructive.
Anyway, I’m not saying I think we should return to arranged marriage as the paradigm!!! And I certainly have no intention to get married again. But my family has talked about all of this in respect to me, but mostly in respect to my daughters, who are 20 and 24. We decided that my parents were way too silent and I was way too headstrong AND alone in making the decisions. We’ve agreed that we’ll be more candid and involved in helping each other with these things to at least point out incompatibilities.
On a funny note, my experiecne with eHarmony was similar to yours, Lexie. Talk about chilling effect! At least you're smart enough to not then go out and attach to someone wildly incompatible! like I did... Ah, well.
One thing I’ve thought about in this vein is the arranged marriage concept. I have a friend in her 50’s who has an arranged marriage and had a work colleague who’s about 40 who also has an arranged marriage- both are from India. I certainly don’t mean to say that arranged marriage is some kind of panacea!! However, there is an element in these women’s cases that worked very well- CERTAINLY better than my selecting process did. And it tracks what Warren is saying about broad-based compatibility. Their parents picked their mates based on the values and compatibility of the families. They picked men from families with the same religion, and the same or similar educational levels, socio-economic expectations and aspirations, values, work ethic, social and political perspectives, as well as how the potential mate’s parents raised their children, allocated money, and acted toward each other.
If my parents had selected my mates on these bases, broad-based compatibilities, and if I had seen the value in it (pretty big “if”), I NEVER would have married or even dated the men I did!! (Maybe one XBF, but he turned out to be an A, and my parents didn’t like him. But they liked his mom and our families were similar). But overall, my parents did NOT like my H’s parents, and then after the (foreseeable?) divorce, my subsequent BFs’ parents. My partners’ parents didn’t like my parents either (with that one exception), so these relationships wouldn’t have been approved by either side.
What wouldn’t have happened if we had had a tradition of arranged marriage and family involvement is that my parents would not have kept their mouths shut and been polite, and I would have expected their input and respected it. On those kinds of data-based parameters, only one of my partners’ mothers was at all like my mom, and none of the fathers were like my dad. The differences in backgrounds and values were great. No family glee or endorsement on either side, much less cooperation.
Another positive about the two arranged marriages I’ve seen is that the “behind-closed-doors” risk is lower. In those two cases, the couples’ parents and extended families are far more interactive and involved and so there was lower risk that arranged husbands and wives could go way off the tracks (like with addiction, abuse, infidelity, addressing mental illness or immaturity and irresponsibility), thereby putting the children and family unit at risk, without their parents and extended family knowing and intervening, even meeting and cooperating in problem solving. One of those two marriages did face a crisis like that, and the weight of it didn’t fall solely on an isolated and fearful spouse (huge advantage), and instead both sides of the family (who already shared values and compatibility themselves) just matter-of-factly rallied and took on the issue, which was solved. I know it doesn’t always work this well, but it does work in some cases and it’s instructive.
Anyway, I’m not saying I think we should return to arranged marriage as the paradigm!!! And I certainly have no intention to get married again. But my family has talked about all of this in respect to me, but mostly in respect to my daughters, who are 20 and 24. We decided that my parents were way too silent and I was way too headstrong AND alone in making the decisions. We’ve agreed that we’ll be more candid and involved in helping each other with these things to at least point out incompatibilities.
On a funny note, my experiecne with eHarmony was similar to yours, Lexie. Talk about chilling effect! At least you're smart enough to not then go out and attach to someone wildly incompatible! like I did... Ah, well.
Member
Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: Eastern Us
Posts: 1,366
I am married, but if this one was to fail I would never do it again. I would love to just be let alone for a bit, to sit in silence and read. To not be affected by someone else's poor decisions; especially financial. Nope, I won't do marriage again.
Member
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Starting over all over again
Posts: 4,426
My marriage was fantastic. We had that "broad based" compatibility thing right from the start. We liked the same things, but had enough independence to enjoy some time appart. We were both artists, she was a gifted pianist and I love the classics, she was a retired super model and I a photographer, we both loved the outdoors, especially the mountains, she had an eye for the stock market and I loved the real estate biz.
Raised a kid together, helped with the grandkids, looked after the older folks in the family, managed a few little businesses together. It was great for almost 20 years.
Then she got addicted to pain pills, and it all went downhill.
After the divorce I realized I had done a bit of fantasizing in that marriage, which is why it was so painful for me to let it go. But that was not her fault at all. We had completely separate finances from the start, so there was no problem there.
#2 Was also fantastic. Completely different woman than #1, and yet we also had that broad based compatibility, but on entirely different things. She's a world class athlete and I love organizing trips and being the cheerleader, we're both incredibly social and love to have friends, we both love going on adventures into the far reaches of the desert, she can haul twice as much equipment on a hike than me and I am great at making sure we only take what we need.
Lasted five years. There were "red flags" popping up way from day one, and having been a good student at al-anon and here at SR I insisted on pre-marital counseling. I set my boundaries on what I would not allow, and she decided that her addiction to anorexia was more important to her. So that ended too, but the good times were great.
I am naturally monogamous, and I have no interest in a relationship unless there is a commitment to make it last forever. Otherwise, what's the point? I can just go to the local "meat market" if all I want is short-term entertainment.
I don't think it's possible to make even a close approximation at a rule that applies to all couples, or all marriages. People are just way too different.
Today I know my weaknesses in the area of relationships. I know how to spot the red flags and I know what I have to offer. As long as I remember all the lessons I have learned.... or at least most of them, my next relationship is going to be as fantastic as the other two i've had. As far as the legalese, that's easy nowadays. Pre-nups and transmutations take care of that.
I'm not ready to try again, not yet. I know that I need to grieve a relationship and give myself time to heal. I'm busy with work problems and health problems so I don't have the time or energy to give right now. But someday soon I will. I have _no_ idea what she will be like, my HP has surprised me both times, so I'm sure I'll be surprised again. Whether it lasts 5 years or 20 or the rest of my life is also unknown. However long it lasts I'm going to be the best I can be, and I know it will be wonderful.
Mike
Raised a kid together, helped with the grandkids, looked after the older folks in the family, managed a few little businesses together. It was great for almost 20 years.
Then she got addicted to pain pills, and it all went downhill.
After the divorce I realized I had done a bit of fantasizing in that marriage, which is why it was so painful for me to let it go. But that was not her fault at all. We had completely separate finances from the start, so there was no problem there.
#2 Was also fantastic. Completely different woman than #1, and yet we also had that broad based compatibility, but on entirely different things. She's a world class athlete and I love organizing trips and being the cheerleader, we're both incredibly social and love to have friends, we both love going on adventures into the far reaches of the desert, she can haul twice as much equipment on a hike than me and I am great at making sure we only take what we need.
Lasted five years. There were "red flags" popping up way from day one, and having been a good student at al-anon and here at SR I insisted on pre-marital counseling. I set my boundaries on what I would not allow, and she decided that her addiction to anorexia was more important to her. So that ended too, but the good times were great.
I am naturally monogamous, and I have no interest in a relationship unless there is a commitment to make it last forever. Otherwise, what's the point? I can just go to the local "meat market" if all I want is short-term entertainment.
I don't think it's possible to make even a close approximation at a rule that applies to all couples, or all marriages. People are just way too different.
Today I know my weaknesses in the area of relationships. I know how to spot the red flags and I know what I have to offer. As long as I remember all the lessons I have learned.... or at least most of them, my next relationship is going to be as fantastic as the other two i've had. As far as the legalese, that's easy nowadays. Pre-nups and transmutations take care of that.
I'm not ready to try again, not yet. I know that I need to grieve a relationship and give myself time to heal. I'm busy with work problems and health problems so I don't have the time or energy to give right now. But someday soon I will. I have _no_ idea what she will be like, my HP has surprised me both times, so I'm sure I'll be surprised again. Whether it lasts 5 years or 20 or the rest of my life is also unknown. However long it lasts I'm going to be the best I can be, and I know it will be wonderful.
Mike
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