
The Case Against Marriage – What You Lose When You Gain a Spouse - basicplus2
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/07/case-against-marriage/591973/
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jdm2212
The article has a few interesting points about community ties, but it's
generally long on word games and short on substance.

The article equivocates between marriage as legal privileges, marriage as
lifelong monogamous commitment, marriage as cultural ideal, and marriage as
signaling mechanism about relationship seriousness.

Yes, this is par for the course for the "Case Against X" template -- shift
seamlessly between different meanings of the word X, because the whole point
is it's a polemic and not a careful argument. But it's still frustrating and
sloppy thinking.

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simonblack
Then there's the other side of the coin: What your spouse loses when (s)he
gains you.

Second-time-arounders who take their time and spend several years with their
partners before marrying again tend to choose more wisely.

My first marriage: 16 and a half years. My (2nd) wife's first marriage: 18 and
a half years. Our partnership: Four years as de-facto partners, 28 years
married. 32 years together so far.

Big lesson from first marriage: When you "win", you lose. My first wife and I
were always arguing and fighting. My second wife and I have never argued. We
both refuse to fight. (We've had some terse words, but never a fight.) We
agree on so many things that nothing else is important enough to lose angst
over.

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downerending
It's not acceptable to speak of, but marrying does chain you to a person. If
they decide they don't like you any more, or just plain go crazy, they can
easily drag you over the cliff, financially and in ways that are even more
important.

Yes, you can break the chain, but not necessarily quickly enough to save
yourself. A "successful" divorce requires a certain level of decency on both
sides, and you won't truly know whether that's there until it's too late.

I hope for the best when people marry, but I also know a part of just how bad
a bad case can be. And reading personal accounts on the Internet (and in the
press), I'm aware that my experience is far from the worst.

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s_y_n_t_a_x
The problem is you guys are marrying the wrong person.

My wife and I do everything together, including late night code sprints.

Find a best friend and marry them when you have that feeling you had as a kid
when you had to go home after a sleep over. Everyday feels like a sleepover.

I'm a workaholic, but I work from home right beside my wife so we can still
chat and hang out.

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downerending
You're very lucky. Unfortunately, IME it's almost impossible to tell whether
someone is a right person until you've been together several years.

And even more unfortunately, your perfect mate can turn into an evil menace
right before your eyes. Been there.

~~~
s_y_n_t_a_x
> IME it's almost impossible to tell whether someone is a right person until
> you've been together several years.

I disagree. My wife and I got married the year we met, engaged the first month
we met.

We had an instant connection of lust and similar interests. After two dates, I
invited her to go overseas w/ me for two months. We knew we'd either hate or
love each other by the end of it. It took 1 week for us to realize we were
deeply in love. We got engaged 2 weeks later and married the same year.

This was all after I had given up on finding anyone. You need to get to know
yourself and what you want, then find someone that wants the same things.
Straight up talk to them about the important things the first date.

The important points for us were the things that had caused past relationship
issues. Weed friendly, really sexual, introverted, dark humor, knows
depression, same political belief, same religious belief. Yes it's good to be
able to compromise, but ideally you don't want to.

> And even more unfortunately, your perfect mate can turn into an evil menace
> right before your eyes. Been there.

We know that neither of us could take that. We would kill ourselves if we
didn't have each other, so propping each other up is actually propping
ourselves up.

Some might call that an unhealthy dependence, I call it being soulmates.

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mmoez
Interesting quote from the article attributed to Anton Chekhov: “If you’re
afraid of loneliness, don’t marry.”

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AnimalMuppet
There are very few things worse than being lonely in a marriage. On the other
hand, a good marriage is absolutely worth it.

~~~
toomuchtodo
And it's hardly trivial to derisk. People grow apart (even if you were perfect
together at marriage), and the cost of splitting can be enormous (emotionally,
financially, and socially).

Do you like to gamble? Marriage is a gamble.

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AnimalMuppet
You grow apart. Every year to year-and-a-half, we've had to _deliberately_
grow back together.

~~~
downerending
Unfortunately, that takes two.

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raxxorrax
Not much, just your freedom, happiness, dignity and money.

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isabella_r
I agree with jdm2212. This was not a well thought out article. The ultimate
purpose of marriage is to provide a stable environment for raising children.
The fact that she mentions being married reduces her after-work beers is the
point which zooms right over her head.

