Women absolutely want the divorce more once they come to conclusion some aspect of relationship is over (typically the emotion part but simply spending less time together or feeling most of the burden of raising kids is enough).
Most guys can suck up now-loveless marriage trivially if kids are fine (after kids come, this is pretty standard path for marriages), heck we can still enjoy sex greatly in such situation. Most women, not so much. I know it sounds sexist, trust me I would be very happy if this wasnt true but when I look/ask/listen around it is.
As an cca older guy at certain age the patterns start emerging left and right, and my own marriage can see some of it, just like most other marriages around us.
Some make it, some don't. When it fails its mostly mixture of personality resilience of both sides rather than some objective measure of (lack of) quality of relationship. Its easy to judge but please be kind to those who are going/went through, they may have been a better partner than ie you and still it wasnt enough to sustain it.
Also it’s often fear of stepdads. My mom dumped my dad so she could date a string of abusive assholes. It would give me pause before leaving a marriage that wasn’t utter misery.
Anecdotally, men are a lot more content with marriage. Women want a lot more. The whole “healthy relationship” ecosystem in contemporary times is almost entirely women driven.
A lot more men than women are able to be content with the comfortable mediocrity that is bringing in the paycheque, doing the chores, getting laid once or twice a month, but otherwise not really feeling much passion or enthusiasm or joy with their partner.
It's not the life you hope for, but there's a lot of social messaging that that's just the way it is, it's what you signed up for, you would be selfish to leave, the grass won't be greener, and also it's probably your fault anyway for not being a better husband. The messaging to women in romcoms and the like is much more toward you deserve better, be brave, junk the loser, go get the life you want.
As a guy who was in a mediocre marriage like this for many years, I basically got my emotional needs met elsewhere: through work, family, friends, time and activities with my kids, etc.
Having recently bought a Dutch house built in 1989, it’s baffling to me that almost none of the outlets are earthed. You can use a schuko plug, but it will lack an earth connection and fall out easily.
Because GFIs were not mandatory on all outlets back then and what exists is automatically grandfathered in when the rules change. Maybe in your meter box there are actually GFIs on all circuits, they just never put the grounded sockets in.
Look for green marked groups or groups with test buttons. Those are the ones that are the most safe to use.
But do check behind your sockets, there is a chance you may have the ground wires already pulled in and they just saved on the sockets.
I have the opposite problem here: I have all of my outlets on GFIs and there are ground wires everywhere. But the system is sensitive enough that I can't use my 10KA spotwelder because the phase lag is such that the system thinks there is a leak when there really isn't.
Thanks! I do have a GFCI (aka RCD) at the panel but the lack of grounding is unsettling. If nothing else the Schuko outlet is a lot better at preventing plugs from falling out.
I'll pull an outlet out and have a look for an Earth wire.
Yellow/Green. Sometimes they push them back a bit so it can be hard to spot. Another way to see it is to pull the front off the distribution panel, if you see Yellow/Green from a common rail going into every one of the outgoing tubes then you know it is at least wired up properly. If you only see blue and brown wires going into the tubes except for the ones to kitchen and bathroom then they won't be there. It is possible to pull in a ground wire afterwards but it is quite a bit of work, I've done it, the annoying bit is if there is a pull box that isn't exposed and they made a junction in there, then you have to break stuff to be able to reach the box.
Technically that's illegal but I doubt there is a house in NL that doesn't have at least one or two of those.
Old homes also often have been wired to use radiator/water pipes as ground. This causes a lot of issues now that old, metal pipes are being replaced with modern plastics, which turn a stupidly-grounded socket into a potential death trap.
Also, when there's a light circuit involved, there may be a black wire. In very old wiring situations, you may also encounter red/white/green wires, with green being the live wire rather than the ground!
That practice is highly illegal and reason for getting cut off from service.
Good point about the other color codes, I should have definitely mentioned that. There are three different kinds that you can find still, the white isn't white though, it is gray, and then, in even older houses but usually only in Groningen and Zeeland if they have not been renovated you can still find cotton/rubber insulation which is super dangerous. If you find any of the older systems codes you should basically just rip it all out and rewire.
Yes, I know, but thank you for the mention. The thing to look for is slow or fast response and maximum leakage current. In industrial settings those are used all the time for slow starting motors and other heavy consumers. The reason I didn't do it is because I only had to make a couple of welds and a triple breaker is 150,- euros or so, so I had to redo a bunch of welds and I didn't have to wait 24 hours to get it.
But if this was a regular thing then I would definitely replace the breaker.
The entire situation where you have great rights for “permanent” workers but nothing but precarity for so called “temporary” workers has been a disaster in Europe. It creates an entire underclass, even for people in high paying jobs. It was easier to get a mortgage, etc. in the US as an at-will employee who could be fired at any time than it was as a worker on a temp contract in Europe, in part because at least in the US there was a level playing field.
I realise the UK isn’t in the EU but it is part of the broader trend of creating a privileged class of permanent workers over all others.
This also increases friction in the labour market since changing jobs means likely giving up a permanent contract.
There are some scenarios where it’s a coordination problem. People could drive light fuel efficient vehicles if so many other people weren’t driving large, heavy, dangerous ones, for example.
Those large heavy vehicles are incentivized by loopholes in regulations because politicians were afraid of affecting "domestic jobs" as US automakers weren't even trying to compete with JP fuel-efficient imports.
Yeah, apparently it was originally to try to stop the rules from killing Jeep, which was having a hard time. New ones that allow more emissions for bigger vehicle footprints are also a big issue since it encourages larger vehicles.
Similarly saying “you can’t have slavery but you can buy stuff made by enslaved people abroad” is morally inconsistent. I don’t know the obvious answer to this though.
Having owned a couple European houses they’re horrible to alter and mediocre on energy. I miss nice adaptable wood structures. Bizarrely Europeans seem to think their cinderblock homes are nicer…
I've never wanted to adapt a house that significantly. But yeah, I much prefer the cinderblock homes and miss them. Something about the wood and drywall houses just feels incredibly cheap, and I don't like the aesthetic (de gustibus et coloribus..)
Houses change over time. A house could have been build in 1920 without a toilet or central heating. Then over time it got a fireplace on the second floor, an indoor toilet, indoor bathroom, then central heating with gas, extra insulation, a couple decades later double paned windows, hybrid heating with a heat pump, then full electric heating, underfloor heating, solar panels, home battery.
Houses change a lot over time, it is nice to be adaptable and not need to carve out stone and concrete every time you add a feature to a home.
The most beautiful homes I have been inside in Europe were wooden cabins in Sweden. The exposed wood ceiling beams, the unpainted wooden panels everywhere, the little details. I never had that with stone or brick buildings. Mainly because they got plastered and painted over, you almost never see the raw materials on the inside.
It's not the unavailability of trees. European countries have wisely decides that cities built of wooden houses are prone to massive fires. USians haven't learned that lesson and the Los Angeles fire isn't going to be the last one.
A yes, the wise Europeans like the Dutch who have homes in Amsterdam that are sinking into the ground due to rotting wooden beams sinking in swamp ground and homes in Groningen with cracks all over due to the earthquakes that came with pumping gas out of the ground.
Or the dozens of structures in Italy that came crashing down, like the various bridges over the past twenty years (250 bridge collapse events in Italy between January 2000 and July 2025).
Yes us Europeans are indeed superior and we never pick the wrong building material ever.
> To each their own I guess. I’ll happily move walls, add or remove a bathroom, add windows, etc.
A sign of the restlesness. Once you find a house to settle in, why would you need to change it ? European houses are typically versatile, US houses aren't due to having closets (which make a room's layout very inflexible) as well as electrical outlets being mandated exactly in the middle of the wall precisely where one would like to place furniture. US building codes are beyond stupid.
> Terrible carbon footprint for concrete too.
Carbon footprint is not that important. I want comfort. More specifically: if you are somewhat wealthy (in the top 10% of incomes, like most of the people here), in the continental Europe you can nowadays easily buy an apartment in a Passivhaus (or almost if renovated) building, with underfloor heating throughout the place, supplied by a geothermal heat pump, with triple-glazed windows and external covers that give you the utmost quietness even when there's traffic just outside. You can't get that in the US because even if you were willing to pay, there exist only a handful of construction companies that know how to build that, and they're all booked for years.
> I know modern structures are better but I also don’t entirely trust block in an earthquake. Obviously less of a concern in most (not all!) of Europe.
You can take a look at Japan. Modern buildings can withstand earthquakes. The issue in the US is that developers are allowed to just build without a civil engineer or architect designing the building. I wouldn't trust that either.
Anything less than fifty percent is state sponsored kidnapping.
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