Wow, didn’t expect anyone to be that harsh about my post. You feel sorry for the kids whose biological father is scum and whom I adopted and who I still see and adore every other weekend?..because I didn’t stay married to their mom who asked me for a divorce cause she had the hots for someone else while I was driving her kids around doing their dishes and laundry?
Really?
(I know I said it was a good marriage and it was basically…but even while it was good…I wasn’t really happy… and when it hit a kinda low point and she asked for a divorce…instead of trying to work on it i nearly broke my ankle running out the front door…)
Well, my situation is pretty unique…I was just leaving out the details…I said a mediocre marriage with kids that could have been fairly happy… That is all 100% true. We could have worked through our rough patch and enjoyed a fairly happy life together…she didn’t have an affair or anything.
Anyways, I am curious what you thought I was saying that was so deplorable? In general, shouldn’t people get divorced if they are not happy and both agree they don’t want to work on it anymore?
Actually, it’s not. There was nothing in the original post that suggested he was in any way a bad father or partner, just someone in a ‘mediocre’ relationship who - now out of it - wasn’t going to settle for that again.
I don’t know what you read into it, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t supported by the post.
I’m single and don’t really have anything substantial to contribute to this thread. I just thought it was funny that I’ve been on the Straight Dope longer than you’ve been with your husband.
Hey, where I come from, “sightings” (introducing youths of appropiate age to see if they happened to like each other) were arranged; marriage itself wasn’t; but this notion that someone who wants to marry must wait until Prince Charming comes along (or Cinderella drops a shoe) is completely impractical. Among other things because Prince Charming spends his whole damn life looking for the next Cinderella…
I know quite a few people who are married to the love of their life but they figured it was, indeed, the love of their life, this is it, forget about violins, love is about cleaning nappies at 3am, after they’d been married for a while.
My aunt’s first marriage was to escape her parents. And then they went and moved in with the Parents From Hell (aka my Grandparents From Hell) while their flat was finished… :smack:
Said Grandparents From Hell are each other’s One True Love and then some (they’re still gaga about each other after more than 70 years) but the reason they got married was that she wouldn’t put out otherwise. His parents (who as far as we know were about as romantic as a horse’s hooves) got married after he proposed in the following terms: “my youngest brother and me are the only ones still single, and if I get married in the next six months he can claim exemption from military service, if you don’t want to marry me I’ll go find someone who’s willing.”
I found “The One” when I was in my late teens but marriage never came up. He was a gorgeous possibly bi-sexual proto-Emo-Goth who sold some personal belongings to get money to buy tickets for us to go see Led Zeppelin. He was a long black leather trench coat in a sea of grubby olive green parkas with matted fake fur around the hood. He was The One and I was desperately in love, but it only lasted a few months. He moved away to San Francisco and the last I heard he was working as a famous and highly paid hairdresser (!). But that was years and years ago. So much for The One True Love. What that’s got to do with marriage and life in general is a puzzlement to me. Marriage to this guy would have been a huge mistake!
Your post rang absolutely 110% true for me, and I applaud you for it.
There’s nothing deplorable about having standards for your own happiness and that which you want to bring to others. I have no idea what Cisco is on about, but I don’t know what’s so noble about settling.
I wonder how many of you commenting are married and/or have kids. The post in question reads like something I would’ve saluted in solidarity when I was 19.
This is what I feel. If you get married and somewhere down the road realize that that person doesn’t inspire you, then you get a divorce. Sucks, but oh well, such is life. If you have kids, however, it’s a whole different ball game. You got yourself into that situation and you need to stay there for them and make it work and not be so selfish. Make the best of your situation and raise your kids to be unbelievably happy. “Don’t stay together just for the kids” applies to situations that are abusive, or when the parents fight so much that staying together is more poisonous to the kids than being apart. Not to situations where you are “fairly happy” but want to be “unfuckingbelievably happy.”
Of course, ready29003 left out some very important details until he got the reaction he was fishing for. He “forgot” to mention that: -they aren’t his kids, -the wife actually asked for the divorce, not him, and -he wasn’t actually happy, contrary to what he said. These are obviously game-changers.
Thanks for the explanation. I’m not completely sold, though. I guess it depends on how hard it actually is for the kids. I’ve seen situations where there wasn’t abuse, but still a divorce was the best thing for them.
That’s a great goal. But when you pass fifty, or sixty, and you’re still “not settling”, you might view things a bit differently.
Notice how most of the people on this thread have said that they wouldn’t call the person they’re married to the “one true love”, but they’re still really happy? Wanna bet what kind of answers you’d get if we asked them WHY they’re happy? Wanna bet how many of them are thinking to themselves, “Gee, I settled, but I’m still happy”? Or how many think to themselves, “What a mediocre marriage, but I’m still happy”?
The point is, you get what you expect. These people are happy in their marriages, not because they sit back and then their partner makes them happy, but because they give to the relationship and get from the relationship and the two people in the relationship create their happiness.
What I get from reading your posts is that you have a big sense of entitlement. Your marriage/wife/family was supposed to make you happy, and when it didn’t you sat there moaning about how mediocre it was, instead of putting something into it that might change things.
You’re looking/waiting for the relationship that will make you happy, instead of a relationship that you can be happy in. If you don’t see the difference between those two, then you have some maturing to do. Because that difference is often one of the keys to what makes one marriage last a lifetime and another fail.
And as long as you’re looking for “the one” that will make you happy, that will make your life not-mediocre, that you will never feel you settled for, you’ll never find her.
Uhh…you get that from my posts? You can gauge how much effort I put into the 6 years of my marriage and raising of the 5 adopted kids? Amazing…well…absurd…but hey it’s an Internet forum…
Not looking for “the one”. I AM happy alone. I was happy before I was married. I don’t believe others make you happy. You own your own happiness. If you feel incomplete and are looking for that one person who “completes you” then I think you’re misguided. Two incomplete people added together do not equal a complete person, rather they equal two incomplete probably codependent people. I am a complete person enjoying my life.
I said I would never marry a girl unless she inspired me or was awesome like very few people I have ever met in my life. I didn’t say the one… I said I have met a handful of people who inspired me like that…so I know such people exist…only one of which was any sort of marriage option. So you can’t say I will never find such a person, I have found 3 of them…I just missed my opportunity with the marriable one. Anyways, maybe I’ll find another. If I do, I’ll be awesomely happy. If not, I’ll be awesomely happy.
If I knew such people existed, why the hell did I marry the woman I did? That’s a different post for a different day…
I would say they’re not married to the love of their life because that love isn’t available; the love doesn’t love them the same or is already happily attached.
People will settle for “good enough” if they can’t get what they really want. I had a former girlfriend that over dinner one night informed me she wanted us to get married just to settle down with someone she got along with, and for her daughter and my daughter to have two parents. I didn’t want to do it though, I need passion.