
Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person (2016) - bookofjoe
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/why-you-will-marry-the-wrong-person.html
======
simonsarris
The framework given in the first paragraph (which both I and de Botton reject)
is fundamentally wrong because marriage is not something you "do", it's
something you make. One of the foremost requirements going in to a marriage is
that both partners understand this. You will marry the right person if you
change your axioms.

de Botton _kind of_ alludes to this here but in a wordy and deeply pessimistic
way, but I don't think that's a good framing for it.

> It might sound odd, but pessimism relieves the excessive imaginative
> pressure that our romantic culture places upon marriage

> Romanticism has been unhelpful to us; it is a harsh philosophy. It has made
> a lot of what we go through in marriage seem exceptional and appalling.

I disagree, contrary to what he says a Romantic (in the literary sense) view
always _allows us to be flawed,_ because it always contains room for
redemption. Thinking that marriage will be some kind of perfect union is
rationalist thinking, like designing a system of gears. Thinking of marriage
as union of two people who work together for something greater that both can
share the fruits of is irrational thinking we need and can easily intuit.
We're just really good at shunning this kind of thinking, these days.

In the end we both agree, he says: "Compatibility is an achievement of love;
it must not be its precondition." I just think his framing here is needlessly
pessimistic and dismissive of the romantic forces, and probably a terrible way
to approach most of life's difficulties, never-mind marriage.

~~~
dpweb
The extremely high failure rate indicates it is either a flawed concept
entirely, or people are going about it completely the wrong way. If you had a
computer that only booted, or a car that only started, 40% of the time - you
wouldn't say, well.. the system is ok - sometimes it works out!

Still, it is encouraged on every front. Venerated by society, and financially
subsidized by the state. Yet when its failing, very little good advice
available. I've found most marriage counseling to be very unhelpful. Designed
to save something (that maybe be shouldn't be saved) with really weak
aphorisms that don't get to the psychological depths needed to explore WHY we
do the things we do, attract and even unconsciously desire chaos and failure,
etc..

But married couples too often lose the fact that it's about the relationship
first. More important than the house, the cars, even the kids. People forget
that everything started with two people and two people only. They stop having
compassion and being kind to one another. They stop having sex (so important),
that feeds the relationship. The relationship is a living thing. If you starve
it, it dies.

~~~
rkangel
The statistics about marriage failures are misleading. They are biased by the
fact that people who divorce tend to have multiple marriages. People who are
bad at being married make it look bad for everyone.

If you look at the statistics for _first_ marriages the picture is less
depressing. Also, the rates have been improving and people getting married
today have much better odds.

~~~
ksec
>If you look at the statistics for first marriages the picture is less
depressing

Sort of depending on where you are in the world. Statistics for First
Marriages is still quite depressing in many developed places, especially in
cities.

~~~
R0b0t1
I think the failure rates of marriages are more related to the strong economic
incentives to marry when it is not "the right time." You forgo a lot of
disposable income by staying single and this can be the main drive to get
married.

And then on the other hand, rearing a child seems to have become more
expensive as a percentage of worker output than it used to be as that output
is extracted by things like rent.

------
zebrafish
"We need to swap the Romantic view for a tragic (and at points comedic)
awareness that every human will frustrate, anger, annoy, madden and disappoint
us — and we will (without any malice) do the same to them. There can be no end
to our sense of emptiness and incompleteness. But none of this is unusual or
grounds for divorce."....

"Romanticism has been unhelpful to us; it is a harsh philosophy. It has made a
lot of what we go through in marriage seem exceptional and appalling. We end
up lonely and convinced that our union, with its imperfections, is not
“normal.” We should learn to accommodate ourselves to “wrongness,” striving
always to adopt a more forgiving, humorous and kindly perspective on its
multiple examples in ourselves and in our partners."

Juxtaposed against the dig at "holy texts" in the first half of the article,
the proposed philosophy in this article is literally the core tenant of
Christianity. All are imperfect, sin has corrupted relationships, the path to
salvation is selflessness and sacrifice, embodied by Christ's sacrifice for
us. Christians cannot live this out, garnering a bad name for the broad
religion as a whole, but again, as humans, that's sort of the point. Grace is
given to those who accept it which further propels them towards giving
themselves up and extending grace to others. It's a daily, hourly exercise
pictured most frequently and accurately in marriage.

~~~
Noos
The problem is that marriage is really a necessary evil for Christianity, and
a required one if you wish to engage in sex at all. It won't exist in heaven
(jesus said we shall be as the angels there), and Paul outright says that its
better to be unmarried to serve the kingdom of God.

The issue with this kind of view is that without the divine commands, why get
married? Why have to deal with wrongness at all? And you kind of see the issue
with secular people now, who choose other values over opportunities to
exercise grace, as you put it.

~~~
zebrafish
I have to disagree with you here, but I am reformed, not Roman Catholic so I
may have different beliefs than others you've come across. Christians believe
marriage was established by God in the beginning of time. The ten commandments
and other laws contain laws particularly for married individuals. Christ
presided over a marriage in the New Testament. Paul gives advice in Ephesians
as to how husbands and wives should treat each other. Paul's advice in
Corinthians is related to his status as a lifetime single, fully devoted to
spreading the gospel as an apostle of God, and I think it gives relief to
those who don't find a partner in life. I don't think it's appropriate to
single out this one section to stand as the Bible's entire stance on marriage.
The other examples provide the biblical view that marriage is a gift from God,
intended, as all things were, to reflect His glory back to Him. As for
marriage in heaven, I don't know enough about the theology around the New
Heavens and New Earth to say, but I know marriage is intended to be a picture
of Christ and His Church and we will ultimately be "married" to Christ in
eternity. Constantly praising and in awe of His Glory. So considering that, I
would say there is no longer the need for the covenant of earthly marriage.

------
Mediterraneo10
Alain de Botton suggests marrying someone even if they are unideal and
accepting their foibles, but what if instead people choose to remain single?
He writes:

> The person who is best suited to us is not the person who shares our every
> taste (he or she doesn’t exist)...

Me, I spend most of my free time consuming literature, films and music. Trying
to assimilate as much of the canon as I can is what drives me; the beauty in
art makes life worth living. If a person doesn't share my tastes and isn’t
willing to sit with me during all these moving and emotionally rich
experiences day in and day out, then that means that they don’t share my life,
and that seems like a bad foundation for any relationship. I do miss
companionship, but I would rather stay single than enter into a marriage that
would be an exercise in mutual frustration or force me to give up that which
gives my life meaning and purpose.

As there is less social pressure to marry today and people now have boundless
access to media, I suspect that many other people will reach the same
conclusion, even if the hunger for companionship or childraising at any cost
means that such insistently single people might remain a minority.

~~~
kypro
> I spend most of my free time consuming literature, films and music. Trying
> to assimilate as much of the canon as I can is what makes me feel alive and
> in touch with the beauty of the world. Consequently, if a person doesn't
> share my tastes, then that means that they don’t share my life, and that
> seems like a bad foundation for any relationship. I do miss companionship,
> but I would rather refrain from entering into a marriage than into a
> marriage that would be an exercise in mutual frustration or force me to give
> up that which gives my life meaning and purpose.

Perhaps I'm unique in this sense, but for me pursuing my own self-satisfaction
has never left me feeling that happy or fulfilled. In fact, I suspect it's
what fueled my depression throughout most of my twenties.

I always thought if I had enough money, or if I started a successful enough
business maybe I'd be happy. But every time I achieved a goal I always felt
more empty and confused. I might feel happiness for a little while, but then I
needed something else and so the struggle started again.

Something I slowly started to realise in my late twenties was that these goals
of mine gave me some surface level meaning, but the deepest meaning came from
doing things for others, especially those I love.

I think this is what a lot of people misunderstand about children and
relationships today. It's very hard to find deeper meaning from an enjoyment
of literature or music. I'm not saying these thing can't bring enjoyment or
enrich your life, but they don't typically give someone a reason to wake up in
the morning either.

Today people too often think that partying, casual sex or other selfish
pursuits will make them happy, but I suspect it has the exact opposite effect.
Finding someone who isn't perfect but who you can love and dedicate yourself
to, or having children and giving everything you can for them, these are
things that can bring us true meaning.

~~~
throw51319
Yeah but that doesn't mean rush to have kids right...? Because then the best
path would be to have kids at like 25, which prob isn't the best way to
happiness.

~~~
names_are_hard
I suspect that the best way to happiness is not to seek it. All the people I
know that married young and had kids at 20 years old didn't do it because they
thought it would make them happy, they did it because they don't use
"happiness" as the north star that guides their decisions. They are from a
different culture and religion and have a different value system, one that
doesn't consider an action's impact on their happiness to be a winning
argument for or against.

Are they happy? I don't know, and it doesn't really matter because it isn't
really the goal, but if I had to guess I'd say they're happier than I am.

I don't think I'm the first to realize that happiness visits those who stop
looking for it. The challenge is that you have to really stop looking, not
pretend to ignore it while you constantly peek over your shoulder to see if it
isn't just about to finally show up.

~~~
throw51319
Yeah, you're right.

I guess there is a fine line between "just do it" and "measure twice, cut
once".

Of course you can just put your head down and follow the traditional path, and
end up fine - with kids, house, etc. But was that the path best for you? Was
it the most fulfilling path? Shouldn't overthink that, but also should spend
some effort to think about it.

------
KineticLensman
> But though we believe ourselves to be seeking happiness in marriage, it
> isn’t that simple. What we really seek is familiarity — which may well
> complicate any plans we might have had for happiness. We are looking to
> recreate, within our adult relationships, the feelings we knew so well in
> childhood. The love most of us will have tasted early on was often confused
> with other, more destructive dynamics: feelings of wanting to help an adult
> who was out of control, of being deprived of a parent’s warmth or scared of
> his anger, of not feeling secure enough to communicate our wishes.

This doesn't universally applies to all marriages. Obviously, you will find
out more about your partner's flaws by actually marrying them, but you will
also discover positives you didn't know about (especially in times of
trouble), and you will both naturally change over time, perhaps in a way that
makes your relationship stronger, sometimes leading to 'caring and swearing'.

If there are differences of opinion or taste or interest, the trick is to
develop coping strategies (implicit or explicit) that are acceptable to both
parties. It also helps to realise, at the outset, that you are agreeing to
spending the rest of your life sleeping at the wrong temperature.

Source: been married for more than 30 years.

~~~
thrav
They have technology to solve the sleep temperature thing now. I don’t want to
shill, but a quick search will find you some options. I finally picked one up
during this California heat wave without AC and it’s a godsend.

~~~
KineticLensman
> They have technology to solve the sleep temperature thing now

My comment on temperature was a tongue-in-cheek way of saying that one might
actually have to make some long-term compromises.

(In fact, I am now better able to sleep in a warmer room that I would have
liked when I was younger)

~~~
snegu
It's so true though! My husband and I have compromised so that we are both
dissatisfied with our bedroom temperature.

------
kstenerud
Wow... Just wow. It's rare to see such a bitter, negative, and defeated take
on marriage put to print.

Just so you know, this person is wrong. You absolutely can marry the right
person, and people do it all the time. But if you do it before learning how
differently your partner thinks compared to you (we often just assume that the
other person thinks the same way as we do, and then judge their actions based
on how WE would react), or if one or both of you tries to pretend to be
something you're not, you'll be in for a lot of troubled waters and
disappointment ahead.

Marriage, like any relationship, is about communication, openness, and trust.
And even then, you have to put work into the relationship to keep the
foundations strong. For every little thing that you don't with full certainty
know where you stand with your partner, your relationship is weakened. And
that's only resolved by open and honest communication about who you really
are, for better or for worse. You are a TEAM. An effective team knows the
strengths and weaknesses of every single part, and uses those to reach its
goals.

The earlier in a relationship that you deal with these issues, the better it
will be.

If you still feel poorly about marriage, I suggest the following video by Dr
John Gottman on making relationships work:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLXX8wzvT7c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLXX8wzvT7c)

Edit: Please please please ignore the downvotes on this comment and watch the
video! At worst it won't change your mind, but it could change your life,
married or not!

~~~
Ancapistani
> You absolutely can marry the right person, and people do it all the time

TFA begins by building the strawman that marriage is about finding the person
who is "perfect for you". There is no one perfect for you - not even yourself,
which is why people grow.

Marriage is about finding the person who shares the same core values and
goals, and who is willing to work with you to build a whole that is greater
than the sum of its parts.

------
alexmingoia
I think this article misses the purpose of marriage: Family.

I didn't marry my wife in pursuit of happiness. I married my wife in pursuit
of family. We're building something greater than both of us, out of love,
respect, and companionship.

In my experience, the people I know who don't "get" marriage tend to see it as
nothing more than a legal codification of a live-in girlfriend/boyfriend. It
appears the author sees it much the same way. Seen from the family
perspective, marriage is so much more than just a long-term
boyfriend/girlfriend.

~~~
closeparen
For some, “family” reduces to “children.” In this case marriage does not mean
much. It’s sufficient to marry a competent and trustworthy friend or
colleague. And to maintain colleague/friend levels of emotional and physical
distance from that person except when actively trying to conceive.

For others, “family” starts between husband and wife. You build a loving home
with each other, _then_ add children to it.

------
smithza
If you have read "Blink" by Gladwell, he points to work by a sociologist who
can, with incredible accuracy, predict whether a marriage will last 15 years--
in a matter of 15 minutes. While watching a live feed of a conversation
between couples, they will be prompted to discuss something arbitrary. The
researchers are looking for emotions and intentions. They have found that
emotions pointing to disrespect and disdain are the highest factors for
marriage failure.

Western culture might have things backwards. It is not love first, commit
second, respect third. It is more accurately respect first, commitment second,
and love third. Love being in the 'eros' sense. The primary feeds the
secondary feeds the tertiary.

------
doorstar
Kind of a strange article with the implication that we've got a wide selection
of people willing to marry us and the challenge is to choose the best one.

I really only ever found one person I wanted to marry and I married them. We
have similar tastes, we have similar values, and they challenge me at an
intellectual level.

If the author feels like that is the wrong criteria - well I'm not sure what
the alternative is. There just aren't a lot of other people I want to spend
every waking day with.

> maddening children who kill the passion from which they emerge

Whatever ups and downs my marriage may or may not have, I would change nothing
whatsoever when I look at the amazing children we have produced together.

~~~
scarface74
Statistically having minor children has been shown to make people less happy.

[https://ifstudies.org/blog/does-having-children-make-
people-...](https://ifstudies.org/blog/does-having-children-make-people-
happier-in-the-long-run)

I’ve never had to deal with raising small children - I have two stepsons for
whom I’ve been their only father since they were 9-14 (now 18-23). But they
were already mostly self sufficient by that time. They were at the fun age.
Not the helpless baby stage where they couldn’t do anything for themselves.

~~~
doorstar
'Happiness' studies show up now and again and I've got to say that I've always
found them suspect. The polling, the questions, the conclusions are so
fungible that I find it hard to believe that there's any value in them.

Satisfaction is a more interesting measure and isn't necessarily reflected in
questions of how "happy" you are. I bet a poll would find that start-up
founders are less happy than people with stable jobs at large corporations.
Does that prove anything about whether or not someone should do a start-up?

~~~
scottlocklin
The entire presupposition that we're supposed to be little happiness
optimizing robots always struck me as completely bonkers. I'm pretty sure it's
something designed to sell more soap or greetings cards.

------
throwawayhacka
The purpose of marriage is not and has ever been to be happy all the time. If
you view love and marriage as about a transaction where the output must always
be happiness, then you're setting an impossible standard. The author
presupposed that marriage is about feeling really good all the time, well -
most of us are going to hit hard times at some point. If you're so selfish as
to believe your partner must always increase your own happiness - you're going
to have a really bad time dealing with the realities in life. You might even
be such a narcissist that you map your own failings onto the other person and
decide they are 'wrong' when you're really a stubborn, selfish, unlovable
hedonist.

~~~
randomsearch
Agree it's not about happiness. It's about fulfilling needs, complementing
each other.

------
jasonlfunk
And even if your marry the “right” person, no one stays the same. In a few
years, you’ll both be different. Marriage and Time changes all things.

This is why the foundation of marriage is a commitment. Love is a choice, not
a feeling.

~~~
randomsearch
> Love is a choice, not a feeling.

Romantic love is not a conscious choice. It's hormonal.

Sounds like you've never been in love.

~~~
jasonlfunk
> Sounds like you've never been in love.

Sounds like you've never been married. ;)

Of course I'm not talking about hormonal attraction/desire. But that's the
whole point. If you base a marriage on hormones, it's going to be very
starting when you wake up one day and the hormones are gone. What happens
then? You break up and move on to the next temporary hormonal ride? Or you
realize that hormones come and go, and the only thing that you can you truly
promise is a commitment. True love, a love that lasts, the only love that
really matters, is a choice.

~~~
randomsearch
Haha touche!

Want to correct you on something - which you might find uplifting. "Love" is
hormonal, and at first is indeed the intense desire and attraction that you're
thinking of. That stage lasts for about 6-18 months and is caused by a couple
of hormones, which inhibit critical thought (love is blind, etc) and cause
separation anxiety.

After that period, those hormones fade (the honeymoon ends) and often a new
hormone is released, which is more of a "long-lasting bond" hormone, that
contributes again to separation anxiety. That hormone can go long-term, and I
guess is an important part of shared child-rearing.

So, first point is that the hormones aren't all about lust or intense
attraction, but also about bonding and long-term relationships.

The next, rather lovely, point, is that the process that leads to you "fall in
love" in the first place can actually re-occur during your relationship, so
you can have more honeymoons later in life. I think that's wonderful.

Returning to the choice... I think you need both head and heart, both the
conscious commitment and realism you're espousing but also the spark. That's
why I'm very keen on exiting the honeymoon period before making any decisions,
and equally keen on "if it doesn't feel right, don't do it."

You might choose not to go with a spark, that could well be a legitimate
approach, but I don't know how well that works - you're going to be fighting
your hormones all the way if you meet someone else and have feelings about
them you've never had for your current partner. Professionals tell me that
that spark matters.

------
Santosh83
No one can be tailor-made for anyone else. Marriages are never-ending journeys
of greater understanding and sacrifice I believe. That's what makes it both
tough and rewarding. However staying single is also perfectly fine. There
should be no imposed group-think that everyone is required to hitch-up or
reproduce. Especially not when the survival of our species is not threatened
by our sparse numbers these days.

------
subpixel
One of the comments on the original article is spot-on:

> Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don't. Sometimes your hard work pays
> off, sometimes it doesn't. Marry a partner, someone with the same values and
> same dreams, someone you can be yourself with, someone you can count on no
> matter what, someone who makes you laugh, someone you can cry with, someone
> who overlooks your flaws while helping you to better yourself, someone you
> can grow old with. This is how loves matters.

------
war1025
So basically an article where someone with relationship issues writes off all
marriages because obviously we are all only attracted to what is least good
for us.

I really don't understand the use of this sort of writing.

~~~
mcphage
> I really don't understand the use of this sort of writing.

I don't think you understood the writing at all, if you think the author wrote
off all marriages. The article is in favor of—and in support of—marriage.

~~~
war1025
> I don't think you understood the writing at all.

That's probably true.

I got married at 23 to a girl I'd known for all of a year and a half, and
we've been happily married for eight years now.

So whatever perspective this author is coming from is probably by definitions
something I'm unfamiliar with.

~~~
Ancapistani
Married at 21 here - we met at 14 and started "dating" almost immediately. We
moved out of our parents' houses and in together and promptly survived the
utter destruction of both of our educational plans. We married at 21, had our
first daughter at 25 and second at 30.

We're 36 today and our relationship is stronger than it has ever been.

If I had to do it over, I would have proposed in high school and gotten
married before heading to college, even if that meant using a Justice of the
Peace and upsetting our families.

Marriage didn't solve all my problems - but it did put them in perspective.

~~~
randomsearch
Interesting - and a big outlier in my experience.

Question that would make you a non-outlier: are you or your partner very
religious?

~~~
Ancapistani
Good question.

I would say "No... but actually yes." I know, not helpful.

My wife and I are strong Christians, without question, but in a lot of ways
we're not "traditional" Christians. I was raised Catholic but fell away from
the Church when it was apparent how difficult it was going to be to have my
marriage recognized by them. It just didn't matter enough to me to be worried
about it.

I'll have to think about this more before really being able to speak on it in
detail, but I think "religiosity" in our case is more of correlation than
causation.

~~~
randomsearch
I asked because childhood sweethearts don't usually work out - people change
too much in their 20s, I think.

The exceptions tend to be strongly devout Christians. I'm not sure why, but
perhaps it's the support from their church community? There's a certain amount
of peer pressure, but also genuine cheerleading going on there. I was brought
up Christian and I do think the community side of church-going can be a net
positive for many people.

------
J_cst
We all tend to change time passing. Me and the person married 15 years ago are
most definitely two different persons today. So marriage is an effort of will
to be renewed each day. Children can help as they may strengthen your will to
stay together in their interest. Economics have a major role too. If the
couple is well off together, this may help too. I think humans are not born to
be monogamous, but they have been (poorly) programmed to accept that by
religion and society.

------
asciimike
I really like Wait Buy Why's take on "How to Pick a Life Partner":

\- [https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/pick-life-
partner.html](https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/pick-life-partner.html)

\- [https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/pick-life-partner-
part-2.html](https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/pick-life-partner-part-2.html)

And the follow-up of sorts, "The Marriage Decision: Everything Forever or
Nothing Ever Again"

\- [https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/09/marriage-
decision.html](https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/09/marriage-decision.html)

I think it takes a super pragmatic (maybe to the point of being un-romantic)
approach to dating and finding a partner, including many "litmus tests" of
sorts. I know at least one person who has written a "relationship design
document" (classic PM move) outlining what matters to them in a relationship,
citing sources like this as well as lived experience.

I also enjoyed reading Esther Perel's "Mating in Captivity":
[https://amzn.to/3lho4gP](https://amzn.to/3lho4gP), which discusses the
tension between eroticism and stability (what it takes to get into a
relationship vs what it takes to stay in a relationship).

I do agree with the premise that "humans are flawed and you'll be accepting
that both you and your partner are human" as well as "you will need to invest
in your relationship to make it work".

------
mellosouls
(2016)

[http://archive.is/aa6wF](http://archive.is/aa6wF)

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
Thank you.

Fortunately, the developers of the NYT website were kind enough to use JS-
based nag, which means it's enough to disable JS (one click in uBlock Origin)
in order to read the article.

------
glial
“ We’re all seeking that special person who is right for us. But if you’ve
been through enough relationships, you begin to suspect there’s no right
person, just different flavors of wrong. Why is this? Because you yourself are
wrong in some way, and you seek out partners who are wrong in some
complementary way. But it takes a lot of living to grow fully into your own
wrongness. And it isn’t until you finally run up against your deepest demons,
your unsolvable problems—the ones that make you truly who you are—that we’re
ready to find a lifelong mate. Only then do you finally know what you’re
looking for. You’re looking for the wrong person. But not just any wrong
person: it's got to be the right wrong person—someone you lovingly gaze upon
and think, “This is the problem I want to have.”

I will find that special person who is wrong for me in just the right way.”

—Andrew Boyd

------
dlojudice
The video by the same author
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuKV2DI9-Jg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuKV2DI9-Jg)

------
sneak
> _We need to swap the Romantic view for a tragic (and at points comedic)
> awareness that every human will frustrate, anger, annoy, madden and
> disappoint us — and we will (without any malice) do the same to them. There
> can be no end to our sense of emptiness and incompleteness. But none of this
> is unusual or grounds for divorce._

I appreciate the author's optimism, but there is indeed a threshold of
consistent patterns of anger and frustration that warrants divorce. Some
people are just very good at seeming reasonable in certain circumstances;
human beings are some of the cleverest organisms around.

------
xwdv
Most people marry the wrong person, but I feel it wouldn’t matter if these
marriages also allowed for an auxiliary partner on the side who could fulfill
the needs not met by the first partner. Many relationships improve when a
partner has an affair they can use as an outlet, as the objectives for each
relationship are made clear and appear much more reasonable to satisfy.

Unfortunately the world is full of jealous, vindictive individuals that are
emotionally under developed, and are preconditioned by generations of systemic
monogamy to attack and shame anything that entertains such polygamous notions.

~~~
trgn
I think there used to be more of a tacit understanding and silent acceptance
of this.

Don't ask don't tell basically. It doesn't fit the ideal that your inner and
outer life should be in accordance. It's what makes americans envious of the
french and their infamous 5-a-7pm window, and how normal people imagine
romance and commitment between the hereditary wealthy.

Those arrangements still rely on concealment though, the hurt of proven
infidelity is often all too real (regardless if you're french or not).
Societal norms no longer encourage or condone willful ignorance.

------
jacquesm
People were marrying the wrong person 100 years ago. They just didn't divorce
because they couldn't or because the church told them they'd get booted out of
the community if they did. No matter if your spouse was abusive, you were
married and that's that.

It's _still_ like that in lots of places, unfortunately.

------
motohagiography
Marriage has become the exception and not the rule for couples I know. The few
people I do know who are married take responsibility for their own happiness
as individuals and expect their wives and husbands to take responsibility for
their own as well. They are individuals with a private friendship, they are
not a unit or a completion or extension of each other. It's not placid, but it
has been stable.

The breakups happen almost invariably when one person holds the other
responsible for their the happiness they are responsible for themselves,
because that person has stopped being responsible for themselves, and it
breaks the trust they have developed together. It's a breakdown of trust and
respect, and that's why they get so nasty and irreconcilable. Marriage is a
pre-modern institution in a post-modern society, so I can see why most people
I know seem to avoid it.

~~~
vorpalhex
> take responsibility for their own happiness

On the list of things that are impossible exists an entry around trying to
make other people happy. Literally nobody else can make you happy - only you
can make yourself happy.

> They are individuals with a private friendship, they are not a unit or a
> completion or extension of each other

I am friends with my spouse, but we are also a unit in the sense that we are
capable of acting in different cooperative ways to accomplish a single goal
whether that's on the macro level of managing finances or a micro level of
handling an emergency like a kitchen fire.

I would agree we don't "complete" each other in that we're both complete human
beings without the other one - but we do extend each other and broaden each
other.

> The breakups happen almost invariably...

The happiness ownership problem is a critical one, but it's not the sole root
cause. A common related issue in relationships that I see is when one person
wants to be infantilized by the other who ends up playing "the adult" \- and
that's not functional for anyone involved.

Another critical problem is the inability to meaningful communicate - I once
had a pair of friends breakup, only for both of them to complain to me that
the other one was never interested in having sex...

But it's a fools errand to narrow down the causes of relationship failure to a
finite list.

~~~
motohagiography
I'd argue the myriad reasons aggregate up into finite categories. Trust and
respect are definitely basic ones. You can develop and exercise how you trust
and respect people, or these can be fragile, and their tolerances and
resiliency can be mismatched, but among others, I'd assert these have
predictive power in the persistence of a union. There are no conditions, as
people just do what they do, but if the effect of relating does not yield
these, I'd bet against it.

------
kyle_martin1
Love is about grace, acceptance, and patience. It’s about serving the other
person. It’s about forming a team where each other’s weaknesses are the
other’s strengths.

The author seems like a depressed nihilist. The “everyone will disappoint you”
vibe is toxic, a little immature, and selfish.

------
chillacy
> The marriage of reason was not, in hindsight, reasonable at all; it was
> often expedient, narrow-minded, snobbish and exploitative. That is why what
> has replaced it — the marriage of feeling — has largely been spared the need
> to account for itself.

I gave in and watched Indian Matchmaking, where they talk about marriages
(what we'd call arranged marriages) and love marriages (what we'd call
marriages). What was presented in the Netflix show was pretty sensible: it's
like tinder but each profile comes pre-vetted by your family, so as to avoid
issues with the in-laws.

While some parts of the show seemed a bit antiquated (and sexist), the
underlying philosophy of "marriage is between families too" seems like a good
idea.

~~~
pluto9
> marriage is between families too

I think that's highly culturally dependent. It may be the case in India, but I
know someone (an American) who got married ten years ago. His family and his
wife's family met at the wedding, but never before or since. There's no bad
blood between them, they just don't know each other and have no reason to
talk. I suspect this is common in most of the Anglosphere.

------
CedarMills
Finding the "right" person for marriage is pretty selfish. Be the right
person. Try to strive to be the best person you can be and give grace when
issues happen. Issues will happen. How you respond to them will result in the
outcome of happiness of marriage.

------
cafard
Having read a bit by Alain de Botton I am left wondering why I did, and with
no desire to read more. Something in his tone reminds me of what Nora Ephron
said of Brendan Gill's: shall I compare me to a summer's day.

~~~
skim_milk
He's also a psychotherapist, so one of the primary jobs he has to fulfill is
developing a positive internal voice in his clients, and damned if he sounds
like a Mr Rogers for adults at times because of that.

Hey it's 2020, apparently a lot of us are reading whatever Alain puts out
because we need it, not because we strictly think we're at a point in life we
feel like we've reached success and deserve the cheery voices in our head now.

------
gautamcgoel
As a guy in his 20s, I am more interested in the precursor to marriage: how do
you find interesting people and form relationships? Of course, the issue of
marriage is a very important one, but to me (and, I suspect, to many HN
readers), the more pressing question is how to form romantic relationships to
begin with. Any HN readers wanna chime in with advice for us young'uns?

------
acephal
So in effect this says more about how uncritical modern people are of
themselves and others than it does anything about the practice of modern
marriage, that many many people blindly march into relationships and
commitments they don't fully understand but regardless pursue an abstraction
of.

Reifying that from the situation of marriage, this is true in a number of
domains in life.

------
dgreensp
If you are in an abusive marriage or one that permanently prevents happiness
for you, get out. If you have kids, that goes double, not least because you
don’t want to be an example to your kids of how to lead a resigned or down-
trodden existence.

~~~
Ancapistani
I've said a lot in this thread that's positive toward marriage, and am
generally a very "pro-marriage" person.

I completely and wholehearted agree with this.

If your marriage is not a source of strength for you, you need to find a way
to make it that. If your partner tears you down emotionally, you're being held
back. If your partner physically harms you - get out. Now. Do whatever it
takes, up to and including walking out the door without knowing what you're
going to eat or where you're going to stay.

------
SomeoneFromCA
The most important thing IMHO in marriage is similarity of household habits;
if you cannot tolerate certain everyday habits of your partner (being too
messy, too cheap etc.), you won't be able to live together.

------
massaman
Also top of mind- "Why you will revive an article from 4 years ago..."

------
WarOnPrivacy
We tend to marry the person who is willing to marry us.

------
sradman
2016 piece by Alain de Botton.

------
johnvega
The success depends on how much both value marriage itself

------
alexpetralia
Unpaywalled:

[https://archive.vn/aa6wF](https://archive.vn/aa6wF)

------
sjg007
This is why everyone needs a therapist and as a couple you need one too. I
definitely married the wrong person.

------
kingdomcome50
I married the right person

------
vortico
Joke's on them, I refuse to marry.

~~~
chapium
I don't understand why we need to divide along tribal lines over this issue.
Some people choose to be single and others seek out marriage, knowing the
risks. There are unique problems concerning marriage. It does not need to be
an us vs them scenario.

~~~
vortico
I was making a joke based on how the article starts out implying that everyone
cares about getting married. "And yet we do it all the same..."

------
drummer
Marriage has its roots in slavery. Not many people realize this today.
Traditions have changed it on the surface, but deeper the effects are the
same. So there can never be a right person to become a property of.

~~~
Ancapistani
Citation, please.

Slavery - well, chattel slavery - is the legal ownership of another person.
You can't own something that doesn't exist, so slavery logically must
therefore recognize the existence of the individual. In the antebellum US,
slaves couldn't legally marry because they did not control their own legal
person.

Marriage is the creation of a new legal and social entity from the dissolution
of the individuals entering into it.

I'm male; my wife is female. In the sense that I "own" my wife, she "owns" me.
In truth, it's slightly more subtle: we have decided to minimize the
distinction between ourselves as individuals. Making a traditional marriage
work requires enormous trust in both directions.

------
bena
Relationships are like democracy or racism. There's no end goal. It's never
over. It will never be "solved". It's something you have to continuously work
on or else you will lose it.

So thinking just because you have elections you've "solved" democracy is
naive. You have to be vigilant in order to keep those elections.

Thinking just because you've elected a leader or minority status that you've
"solved" racism is naive. By not constantly reflection on your own thoughts
and actions and being wary of the thoughts and actions of those around you, it
is easy to let it creep back.

And thinking just because you've gotten married that you've finalized a
relationship is the most naive thing. If anything, it's a commitment to work
more, not less at maintaining the relationship, because the consequences for
breaking it are more.

