Marriage in the age of a 200-year human lifespan

[Rhythmdvl]

Holy shit does this thread make me glad I’m in a happy marriage. Get bored with Mrs. Devil? We’ve learned, done, and grown a lot so far–stagnation just isn’t feasible. If she goes first I’ll be heartbroken at 60, 70, 80, 120, or 200 … utterly heartbroken and devastated, not glad to be free to prowl.

No claim here that all marriages last forever, just the notion that the passage of time improves, rather than detracts from the bond. I guess the concept that mere *time *is sufficient to sully a marriage is as foreign to me as the OP/others find concept that in the end, it will be the one thing that there was too little of.

[begbert2]

@Polerius

Out of curiosity, would you also be OK being in the same profession for 150 years (assuming you found one at 30 years old that you liked a lot) ?

FTR, I’m not saying a spouse is the same as a job.

Define “OK”. I’m “OK” being in my job now only because if I didn’t have a job, I’d rapidly become miserable due to, not a lack of a job, but instead a lack of money. I have a feeling this addiction to money will persist as long as I do, and so I would remain “OK” with my current job (or any other that is not worse) for as long as I felt I needed to endure it in order to remain financially solvent.

I certainly hope most people’s relationship with their spouse does not in any way resemble my relationship with my job.

[Malthus]

@Polerius

@Malthus

Yup, if that option were possible.

Out of curiosity, would you also be OK being in the same profession for 150 years (assuming you found one at 30 years old that you liked a lot) ?

FTR, I’m not saying a spouse is the same as a job.

All I can say is, it’s an odd sort of comparison. I do a job, as other noted, for money, mostly; hopefully there would be a time in my life when I could do what I want for the love of it. Conversly, in marriage I am already doing what I want for the love of it.

[Skammer]

@Polerius

Just to be clear, are the people who have responded so far saying that they can envision being married to someone for 170-180 years?

Forgetting about the statistics for a moment, do you personally see yourself potentially married to someone for 170-180 years?

So you’re saying instead of having to say goodbye to my wife after fifty years, I could have her for three times as long? Where do I sign up?

[Steve_MB]

@pedescribe

If we can live for 200 years, we’re probably cyborgs. Even a well-cared for body will just crap out around year 140 at the latest.

Everything including the brain would give out in 120-140 years of so, so becoming a “cyborg” would be irrelevant. Living to 200 would require either arresting or reversing aging at its most fundamental levels (e.g. DNA degradation) or uploading minds into computers.

In either case, that would result in potentially indefinite lifespans – you’d live until something destroyed your body beyond the ability of even advanced medicine to repair (and even that wouldn’t kill you permanently if uploading is available, unless you got careless about keeping brain backups).

[Steve_MB]

@xtisme

I think that 200 years would fit into the model we’ve seen as life expectancy has increased over the last few hundred years and larger groups of people are living longer lives. People already don’t have to ‘grow up’ as soon or rapidly as they used to have to do (at least not in most Western style countries today).

Now, if we are talking about a thousand years or more, then that’s a more radical change, and would probably be something far different. But I think 200 years of life would look very similar to the 100+ years a lot of folks are living today, and the over all model of relationships would remain basically the same…just sort of stretched out a bit.

If aging and disease can be cured, lifespans would be highly variable – with “splatted beyond repair” as the only cause of death, the probability of dying in Year X would be more or less constant for all values of X (if anything, it might go down with increasing age as you learned not to do damnfool things). Unlucky (or reckless) people would die as young as people do today; lucky (or careful) ones could live thousands of years (unless human psychology hits some kind of wall resulting in eventual suicide).

[Gagundathar]

Considering that my dear bride is in poor health and will probably predecease me (what a curious term that is), I would gladly sign up for another 100 years and give just about anything to do so. I searched for her for a long time and am quite unwilling to say goodbye anytime soon.

[Omar_Little]

This is one of the subtopics of a science fiction book by James Halperin, The First Immortal.

In 1988, Benjamin Franklin Smith suffers a massive coronary and is placed into cryonic suspension, igniting a storm of controversy among his suspicious relatives. In 2072, on his 147th birthday, he is reanimated by his great-grandson, rejoining a world in which such procedures–along with eugenic selection, virtual reality, and nanotechnology–have become commonplace. Ben’s friends, children, grandchildren ,and mother are also given second chances in this brave new world; technology has even made it possible for Ben to have his dead wife cloned as an infant, raised by their son (also frozen and revived) to an adulthood in which she marries him again.

[begbert2]

Um. This is interesting and all, but perhaps if we pretended that our lifespans were doubled by a magical fairy coming down and waving her wand (poof), that would help us focus in the marriage issue a bit better.

[Cat_Fight]

@jackdavinci

Depends on whether the increase in life span also includes a greater period of youthfulness and child bearing viability. If so, then the ‘sowing the wild oats’ phase will just last longer than previous, and the settling down period will be similar to how it is now.

Oh great. Super strains of STDs.