Funny, in this post, you were engaged within three months. You also note that you only got married in that time frame to give your husband health insurance.
So what if I don’t give a specific anecdote? I’m pitting the practice. If you need a little storytime with every post, go back to kindergarden and sit in a book circle. Meanwhile, who says your “worldview” about my post holds any water beyond your own fetid little imagination?
I believe I nixed religious arguments in the OP. I also conceded that there are valid political and economic reasons for early marriages that most teen 20-something “early marriers” in the US aren’t claiming. I’m pitting people who do it for reasons like, “we’re uncomplicated people, we don’t NEED to spend more than a couple months getting to know eachother”. This is stupid. I’m pitting it.
Great! Thanks for your opinion on what I think. Be careful not to repeat it, or you’ll sound like a donkey.
Okay, huddle up in your hole and don’t think about the outside world, trends, culture, or other people. I guess you don’t read the papers or watch the news, either. There now. Don’t that feel cozy? Sorry, I concern myself with the world around me. I get irritated when I constantly watch other people make predicable bad decisions and then try to defend them. I love how no one comes in and says, “okay, I admit it wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but I did it for what I felt were the right reasons, and I’d do it again!” No, they’re all trying to say, “my decision was sound.” Revisionist history. You’re categorizing your risk retrospectively, which is inaccurate. ANY risk is, after looking backwards, “sound” if it turns out right, and “foolish” if it turns out it was wrong? I’m saying, regardless of later outcome, it’s a stupid thing to do. I pit seeing a lot of people make the same bad decision. So do a lot of people. If you want, HH, I’ll PM you every time I see a pit thread about other people making bad decisions! Actually, no, I don’t have that much free time.
I’m still trying to figure out what’s the point of your stupid OP.
I think anyone who had read the OP would know the point by now.
Are you suggesting that getting engaged in three months and getting married in ten are somehow contradictory statements?
No. Even you aren’t that stupid.
Oh, and I never said anything about only getting married in that time frame to get health insurance. You asked what the rush gained us, and I told you what it gained us in very specific terms.
You said:
And I said:
Feel free to attempt to find any contradictions in there, as it will allow you to ignore your own lame OP and subsequent posts.
If he didn’t need health insurance, would you have waited longer? If so, why?
I’d have married my husband if he were seriously ill and needed insurance after only 3 months. With trepidation, but I would have done it. Because I didn’t have that factor urging me on, I waited a bit longer. I think most people would, but I could be wrong about that.
Hey, this isn’t a livejournal or a blog. You are presenting an idea, a conversation to be shared with thousands of people. And part of the idea of this board, at least, is that we ask people to explain their posts and experience to contextualize.
I’d say the fact that your OP has garnered little respect should suggest that it’s your worldview that doesn’t hold much water beyond “your own fetid little imagination.” It’s not that people are disagreeing with you; it’s that the OP itself shows a lack of understanding of the world outside your window.
I didn’t mention religion in particular. You claim to have knowledge that "most teen 20-something ‘early marriers’ are not marrying for “valid political and economical reasons.” How, exactly, do you know that? And why is one reason more valid than the other?
Look, you’ve placed yourself in the unpleasant company of people who think they know what’s best in how other people live their lives. Luckily in Massachusetts, we’ve had some success fighting that ignorance.
I guess this sounds witty to you.
Yeah, thanks for the tip. I’ll see if I can’t rustle up one of those newfangled paper things you mention. There are a metric shitload of things that concern (and should concern) us all in this world. What two individuals choose to do in their own lives doesn’t strike me as one of them. After all, if you’re concerned about bad decision making, you’ll be quite busy. I don’t suppose that’s something you’ve done, in your limited time on this planet, have you? I mean, you’ve never done something hasty, not well thought out, and had to deal with the consequences…
…like this OP, for instance?
It’s foolish to plan to marry someone after only knowing them for three months.
Disagree.
People aren’t so much arguing against me as posting anecdotes to the contrary. The plural of anecdote isn’t “data”. Also, anecdotes aplenty nonwithstanding, apparently no one is actively advocating marrying early. The best they can muster is, “I did it and I turned out fine”. In this sense, a lot of people agree with me.
Do an informal poll of people getting married, smartass. Betcha 99% of them will mention something about love or forever or soulmate. No one says, “this is mostly an economic decision”.
I’m all for gay marriage! If, that is, they don’t rush into it like dummies.
It did at 1am.
I’ve done hasty things before, sure. But comparing making a post on the SDMB with marrying someone is ridiculous. Meanwhile, I think my position is well thought out. Other than a handful of anecdotes, I don’t see anything saying I’m wrong.
I agree with the general spirit of what you are saying – I can’t personally, in my opinion, comprehend people who get married so quickly. But I’m not really judgmental of them, either, because their life decisions are theirs to make and I really don’t care as long as they’re happy. The problem is not the opinion but the vitriol and judgmental attitude accompanying that opinion. People, as a general rule, don’t like to be judged.
I’m guessing that the motivation for making the OP is that you don’t want to see your friends wind up in pain as a result of what you perceive to be idiot decisions. I agree that anecdotes are not scientific data. But the OP in itself, based as it is on your life experience, is entirely anecdotal/opinion-based, which is why I am not surprised that you have received a smattering of anecdotes in argument. Well, that and the fact that you posted it in the Pit, not GD.
(ftr, I have no dog in this fight. I was pissed off at first, but your subsequent posts revealed that you weren’t really criticizing what I thought you were. You seem less committed to your criticism of people who marry in their early 20s and more committed in the criticism of all people, everywhere, who marry without really knowing one another. I do tend to agree with you regarding revisionist history.)
The only thing I might argue is that you shouldn’t be dragging young people into it, because maybe older people are just as likely to marry on the fly as young ones.
Part of the problem is the ongoing debate in which Ruby defends your position… but the debate seems to be about statistics with regard to how marrying young affects divorce rates. I think the real question would be whether young people marry impulsively more than older people do. THEN you would have some evidence for a correlation between youth, impulsive marrying, and failed marriages.
How about this for an early marriage. Disgusting.
I was trying to come up with empirical backing for what I thought was true. I know, it was stupid of me to try to find proof for what was just a bunch of anecdotes. I guess I shouldn’t have tried, and let everyone stick to dueling anecdotes. That seems to be what people wanted in this discussion.
It wasn’t intended as a criticism against your position. I think it’s a good debate. I was only saying that I was personally confused over what Night Rabbit found so reprehensible – marrying young, or marrying quickly. At first glance, you would think both, but she later seems to narrow the issue to marrying quickly.
Since your cites seemed more about marrying young than marrying quickly, it makes me wonder if there is any evidence that young people rush into marriage more often than older people. Because then maybe you could construct some kind of hypothesis like
A: Young people tend to marry quickly.
B: Quick marriages tend to end in divorce.
Therefore, young people’s marriages tend to end in divorce.
If we have evidence for that sort of relationship then maybe Night Rabbit’s opinion is actually based on fact.
And you’re one of the nicest people on the Dope, so I wouldn’t take offense even if you were criticizing.
I think marrying quickly is pretty risky. I have been convinced that marrying young is not necessarily the horrible decision I thought it was.
You know, finding statistics on the social sciences that are peer reviewed and concrete, that you can link to on the internet, is quite difficult. I don’t have access to the good databases, and I feel I can’t hold to my position without any hard proof. I think finding evidence for length of courtship before marriage would be well nigh impossible, since you’re totally relying on self-reporting, and someone would have to be doing serious research on it and getting it published. Thus, we are left with dueling anecdotes.