I was married for a couple years back in the mid 1990’s. Didn’t end well. Have dated several women since. My current girlfriend has been living with me for a year. That’s now ending, at my request. I’m just glad we aren’t married, it’s complicated enough already.
Anybody else like me and feel that marriage is not worth the risk and the hassle to get out of? I know that’s a negative outlook, but look at the statistics, most marriages end in divorce. Friends is fine, dating sure, but I don’t see ever getting married again.
Agreed. I can’t ever imagine getting married again (and, for the record, I still am now) if someone even held a gun to my head. It’s just too complicated and soul-draining. However, I do realize that if my circumstances had been different, I might hold a completely opposite attitude. But as it is, I’ll leave the matrimony for those who apparently can do it right.
Sorry about your own relationship ending though. I hope things improve.
Now, I’m not married, nor have I been, but I think this is the kind of outlook that is exactly why marriages fail; they’re marriages that shouldn’t have happened in the first place. It seems like people go into them light-hearted, or with expectations to end. As I understand it, in times past it was a lot harder to leave a marriage, plus the social stigma, so there was a lot more incentive to work things out. Of course, I doubt that’s the right way to approach it either.
So I say to you, if that’s your outlook, that’s perfectly fine. Marriage isn’t for everyone, sometimes labels mean a lot to people (ie, “wife” instead of “girlfriend”), and sometimes they’re not worth the baggage that goes along with it. If marriage looks like too much of a commitment or seems likely to fail or you’re not looking for that sort of commitment, don’t do it.
What’s important is that the two people in the relationship are satisfied with the state of the relationship and it’s implications on their belief structures, their families, and their offspring.
Most marriages do NOT end in divorce. Yes, a lot of them do, but I think the current estimate is around 42%. It’s not easy to be married a long time, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Well. I mean, how long did you know your ex-wife before you married? I think a lot of the problems that people have in marriage can be spotted and dealt with (or not dealt with, as the case may be) before the marriage. I also think both persons’ motivations for getting married are really relevant, and it’s important people communicate about those motivations honestly. Some people have an unrealistic expectation of what it’s like to be married and aren’t aware of the amount of tedious effort it can take to hold things together.
I don’t believe knowing someone for years before marriage can prevent every issue, but I think it would improve the odds of the marriage surviving. I’m actually not as Pollyanna about this topic as I may sound, it’s only that I’m deliriously happy with my marriage and feel blessed that my husband chose me of all people to spend the rest of his life with. We’re total pals, sometimes we can’t sleep at night because we stay up too late talking about random crap, and we have nothing but a positive impact on one another all day and all night long. Marrying him was the smartest decision I ever made–and I’ve made some damn smart decisions in my lifetime, so that’s saying something.
But I also know people who say ‘‘I married my best friend’’ only to watch their relationships spiral down into a fiery crash of doom. As a kid growing up I watched my mother’s 4 marriages fail along with a bunch of other long-term relationships, and if you really pay attention you can actually observe in vivid detail two people fucking up a perfectly good relationship. It’s a choice people make, but often times they don’t realize they’re making the choice because it’s disguised as a smaller choice. Perhaps there is a point of no return – and both people definitely have to be on board for it to work – but I think there are a great many judgments people make on a daily basis that contribute to the success or failure of their marriages. It can be the difference between walking into a different room to calm down or saying something nasty to your partner. Or me replacing the roll of toilet paper when I’d rather throw it at my husband – whatever. The point is, lots of little choices can add up to a very long term choice of helping a relationship succeed or helping it to fail.
That is my opinion. There are a ton of Dopers on here with extensive marital experience, I only have but 2 years experience being married, 6 years total with my husband. Since we’re still so happy, I’d like to believe I know a thing or two, but those people who have been married 10, 15, 20 years and their love is still oozing out of every post they make – talk to those people, they will really be able to tell you why marriage is worth it.
That some marriages end in divorce doesn’t mean that not marrying will guarantee a relationship. Maybe not getting married means not mingling finances, etc., and is so the ending would be less logistically complex; on the other hand, I’m assuming it doesn’t hurt less. Also, that marriage is complex to dissolve is, to me, an argument* for* it. It’s a lot harder to just quit and walk off when things are rough.
I’m happily (most days) married for 8yrs now. I’ve always assumed that divorce is made to be complicated in order to discourage people from attempting it. Sort of a “think really hard about getting married because look how difficult this is to un-do” check. That’s poor logic, though, because the vast majority of people getting married do not assume that they will be the ones getting divorced.
Those who have been through the marriage/divorce cycle once are more likely to consider such a possibility the second time.
My in-laws got divorced before I was born. My father-in-law is living with his (as best we can count) fifth wife, although they are officially divorced from each other now. My mother-in-law, on the other hand, never remarried and has been in a happy long term relationship for a very long time. Go figure.
Here’s the thing. If you’re living with someone, co-own a house with them, share property, and have kids with them…well, not being married to that person isn’t going to simplify things in the event you two split up.
I honestly can’t understand couples who live together and have kids together can think that things will be simpler if they split up if they never formally marry each other. The complexity isn’t due to signing that piece of paper. It’s due to the complex nature of shared finances, shared parenting, and shared emotional investment. Having a kid with someone ties you to that person for a minimum of 18 years, and likely more. As long as that child is alive, you’re going to be stumbling over your co-parent at graduations, weddings, funerals, birthdays, holidays, and on and on.
Marriage is a lot of fun, but it’s also a lot of work. I’m very happily married and have been for several years. But if, for whatever reason, my wife and I were no longer married someday, I really can’t see myself getting in to that type of commitment again. I made the right decision with the right person, and I just don’t see that happening twice in my lifetime.
I recently heard a comedian say something like, “My uncle’s been married three times. I asked him if he was ever going to get married again, and he said, 'Nah, I’m just gonna find a woman I hate and buy her a house.”"
I never intended to get married, but I have been for 17 years and would never want it to end, but if it did due to death (his, obviously), divorce or desertion, I would never do it again. Doubt I’d even seriously date. I feel like I won a gamble with huge odds stacked against me once, but have no desire to try my luck at it again.
I’m married, have been for years; if something happened and I was no longer married, or if I had a life over … why, I’d do it all again.
I’m used to sharing stuff in a partnership, and living with another. I’d hate to be single, and none of my single friends are particularly happy being single - it was fun when we were all younger, but I have no desire to go around dating strangers these days.
Since I like to live together with another anyway, there are few reasons not to get married. The only advantage in this jurisdiction would be to avoid the property equalization on divorce (counterbalanced by certain legal rights to pensions and the like). Otherwise, marriage is just a formal acknowledgment of a status one already has.
I’m happily married, have been for 8 years, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. It isn’t even all that much work–or rather, when it is, it’s work that I enjoy for it’s own sake (like making a point to spend time together, or have sex, or whatever), and so it’s not something I mind. It’s never, ever seemed like a burden.
I think my marriage is simpler than most because we don’t have kids, and we’ve really avoided any huge tragedies, so I do feel blessed in that regard.
If I were widowed, I sure hope I’d someday find another person that I could be happy with, and I wouldn’t be adverse to marriage in principle. But I’ve seen enough miserable ones that I would be very careful.