Im 26/Male, had 2 major relationships. 1 from the age 16 to 22 and was engaged, and the other was from 23 - 26 living together with mortgage (ended about 3 months ago).
Now you know my background I question why everyone around me who is married have major problems keeping their relationship together and keeping it alive. From affairs to constant arguments but while in the social eye, they pretend they have the best relationship on the planet. I believe marriage is fading like the believers of god.
Maybe, however I know alot of people as my work place has about 800 members of staff. But my friends are all in relationships and heading into marriage with a string of unfaithfulness behind them and will continue Im sure. Its just too easy to get a one night stand these days. After all I am near Newcastle, UK which is renowned for its easy ladies!!
The older I get, the more convinced I get that we’re living in an age where “married” is close to meaningless. I’ve been married, and I feel about as secure in my current relationship as I had in my marriage–or more precisely as secure as I should have felt in my marriage. We’re together until one of us feels strongly that we shouldn’t be–then we’re not. I don’t quite see what thinking “I’m married” would do to that frame of mind.
Which is not to say that my SO and I will not marry–but ultimately it’s not very meaningful, is all.
Half of all people who get married in America stay married for the rest of their lives.
That’s really an amazing acomplishment when you think about how different people are. So, yes, it DOES work very, very well for millions of people today.
Not being married, myself, but a keen observer of those in that, ahem, exalted state, I have noticed that the truths (and the lies) you tell yourself going into such a commitment tend to lay a foundation for your part in its success or failure.
I have a close friendship with a couple who are, individually, two of the most honest people I know. When my turn comes, I intend to emulate their examples. That is one strong relationship.
I have several friends in various stages of separation and divorce, for varying reasons. Those that lay about moaning “why me?” are uniform in their ability to hoodwink themselves about both their own motivations and the motive of others.
Those whose relationships went their natural course admit to knowing, and to disregarding, that there was a “functional obsolescence” inherent in how they related to the SO. Slightly foolish, yes, but honest.
As quoted earlier, “Half of all people who get married in America stay married for the rest of their lives.”
Yeah you guys may stay married for the rest of your livesm but not to the same person.
Also I can’t imagine the marriage percentage being so high over here in the UK. Maybe Im just yet to meet the right person, or maybe I attract the wrong person, or maybe I’m not the right person…now Im confused.
I can only really speak for my own marriage. Just yesterday morning, my wife and I were talking, and we both said that we’re the only people in our lives that we never tire of. We can only take so much of our friends and our other family members, and we even need the occasional break from our kids… but we always, always enjoy being together.
I think Sinshine hit in on the head when she (?) talked about honesty. Shortly after we were first married (over 12 years ago), my wife’s mother advised my wife that she shouldn’t tell me everything – that she should always have secrets kept only for herself. Of course, my mother-in-law divorced her only husband. Not only did my wife tell me about what her mother had said, but she has since completely ignored the advice. My wife and I tell each other everything, even things we know might be painful for the other to hear. This policy has never failed us, and if anything brings us closer together.
Lots of people do have problems with marriage, but speaking for myself, I’m happy to have one person in this world with whom I can be honest, and who has never gotten sick of me after 12 years. Sounds like it works to me.
I think perhaps you are confused. That stat isn’t saying that half of all people get married and stay married forever. It’s saying that since roughly half of all marriages end in divorce, half of them last until one partner dies (the rest of your life). If the marriage lasts until you die, then it does indeed imply that you’ve been married to the same person.
Are you saying the divorce rate in the UK is above 50%? Or that less than 50% of Britons get married in the first place?
Of course it’s hard to keep the relationship going well. You don’t spend the rest of your life (or any part of your life, for that matter) with someone else without some level of conflict. That goes for family, friends, and romantic partners. It’s just the nature of interacting with other human beings to sometimes have different interests and priorities.
Marriage works only as much as you’re willing to work for it. It requires effort and dedication and some measure of skill at communicating and compromising. To some people it’s not worth any effort at all, and it doesn’t work well at all for them. To others, it’s worth any effort imaginable, and it tends to work well for them.
I don’t think that marriage no longer works for people, more that people tend not to work for marriage as much.
Perhaps you just need to meet new people with enough honor and respect for themselves and other people not to sleep with everything on two legs. That would take care of the repeated infidelity problem.
Mine is working very well so far, and I predict that it will continue to do so well into the forseeable future. In the entire time we have known each other we’ve been constantly there for one another, and outside of a couple of fairly minor spats and petty things that get on one anothers nerves, have no problems within our relationship at all. And the ones we do, are terribly minor (i.e. I forget to put a dish in the diswasher, she tells me I forgot, and that it annoys her, I apologize and put the dish in the dishwasher.)
I have one freind-couple who have been together for about 10 years, 4 or so of them married. Outside of one major issue where they seperated for a couple of months, they both are quite happy in the relationship.
I have one freind-couple who have been together for about 5 years or so, and are not married. They are happy and living together, but have pretty major fights on a semi-regular basis because he doesn’t want marriage/kids, and she does. One of them will likely give in soon, but I don’t see them remaining together, forever.
And I have one freind-couple who have been together for about 10 years, and have been married for the last 5 or so, who are for the most part totally miserable. I wish they would get a divorce just so I could quit listening to the bitching. But there is a kid involved (who the female purposely had) and she is saying she wants another one. IMO they should never have married. But that’s just me.
Not to be nitpicky, but the actual statistic is that the rate of divorce is about half the rate of marriages. (You can root around in some numbers here if you’d like.) This would actually mean that more than half of people who get married stay married, as any given person generally only contributes once to the “Get Married and Stay Married” column, but many folks make multiple appearances in the “Get Married and Get Divorced” column (although the same folks can also end up in the “Stay Married” column at some point). People from the “Stay Married” column can recontribute in the case of the death of a spouse, but at that point they can contribute again to either column, and remarriages appear to consist much more of divorcees than widows.
So statistically, any given marriage has about a 50/50 chance, but more than half of marryin’ folks will end up with a life-long marriage.
I’d say marriage isn’t completely outdated just yet.
Thanks, Avalonian. That’s what I want to be able to say in, oh, fifty years. Although we’ve only been married for a short while,Mr. Lissar and I have spent almost every day of the last four and a half years together. We’re not tired of each other. We just don’t get tired of each other. It’s one of the reasons we got married.
For what it’s worth, we have never been unfaithful to each other, and we both follow the “fading tradition” of believing in God. When we married, we deliberately chose a wedding service in which we made stunningly huge promises to each other. It meant something very large to both of us, and gave us enormous accountability to each other, to our families, and to God. I think that accountability, along with the honesty already mentioned, helps a lot in staying together. We’ll see, won’t we?
Its good to hear so many people happy with marriage and with god, but must conclude that I still have no faith in either, along with a high percentage of friends, family and colleagues.
Do you think it has anything to do with your pessimism, as to why you have no faith in God or Marriage?
I agree completely.
Happily married because we told ourselves what we wanted out of marriage and we got it.
I think a key ingredient in marriage is humor/laughtor. Too many adults lose their sense of humor and lose their ability to laugh and truly mean it. My wife makes me laugh all the time.
Another ingredient is honesty. Honesty with yourself. If you lie to yourself and think a certain aspect of someone will melt away…you are wrong. I was a major pig-pen when I first met my wife who was a neat nick. It drove her crazy that I did not think twice about leaving the news paper on the couch etc…etc… I have since changed my behaviors as best I could. We all make compromises, just make sure to limit the sacrifices.
Marriage definitely works. People who like to muse that the idea of two people pairing up long term is some artifice of society are the ones fooling themselves. It’s been going on for many thousands of years now.
Some recent changes:
People are now more willing to believe that marriage is not for them, which is fine, as long as you come to that realization BEFORE you’re married.
As a society, we are slowly accepting the notion that maybe before age 25, you do not have enough of an idea of what you want out of life to decide if you want to marry.
The wealthier societies of the world are turning out people who are more “domesticated”, like a pet. A domesticated cat for example, by virtue of the fact that its easier lifestyle prevents it from having to face the harsher realities presented to wild cats, is physically and sexually mature, but mentally and emotionally immature (Morrison, “Catwatching”, 1990ish). I believe many humans are now domesticated in the same way. They have adult bodies guided by the minds of overgrown children, unable to handle the responsibilities marriage brings on, but still wanting the physical stimulation.
Still, there are plenty of people who are capable of making proper choices for themselves. Marriage works, but maybe not for you. Deal with it, and don’t worrry about justifying it by pointing to to some trend of marriage not working.
Keep in mind, that Liz Taylor, Jennifer Lopez, my brother, and other serial polygamists account for about half of all marriages and most of their marriages end in divorce, whereas most people only marry once or twice.
So I think most people who get married don’t divorce.
My own perspective on the rising divorce rates: We think too much of ourselves. We consider ourselves too important to put up with one other person. We have options. This is a good thing, and it has some bad consequences.
Marriages can work, but it takes alot of humility.
I get tired of my husband, so I can’t say he and I never tire of each other’s company. But I do know that my “being tired” of him is usually just a reaction to him doing something annoying and I know that I am unusually easy to annoy.
Knowing that about myself is a good thing. Ignoring that about myself would lead me to believe that I’m not at fault. I am.
I’m not claiming that I know/recognize all of my faults, but it seems many people don’t recognize any of theirs. That would make a marriage extremely difficult, as the other person would always, in your head, be to blame.
