I’m so sorry you’re going through this, Cockatiel. Even though your dad is staying for now, it isn’t easy to go through all this emotional upheaval. I second, third, whatever, the suggestion to talk to someone about your feelings - whether that person is a formal counselor or not.
WinkieHubby and I both watched our parents divorce in a fairly nasty fashion (he got to experience it twice after they remarried each other, lucky guy.) Neither of my parents have remarried; both of his parents have remarried, and his mother is divorced again.
We’re about to celebrate our 10th anniversary, and have been together almost 14 years. I think we both took what we learned from our parents’ failed relationship and went for the opposite. We’re best friends and ALWAYS a team - which is what has kept us together through some big rough patches.
EXACTLY. I have a friend who’s getting married soon and her and her fiance get into arguments constantly about everything (and are constantly miserable), and she thinks that after they get married that’ll all go away. And I’m like “What, a piece of paper is going to change the fact that you guys actually hate each other?” I can’t stand it when people just get married for the sake of getting married - marrying the first person you sleep with if you don’t know for sure that you love them (and I must make the distinction that a lot of my female friends don’t seem to understand: SEX DOES NOT EQUAL LOVE) probably isn’t a good idea (now on the other hand, if you guys are so in love that you’re making me sick, go for it).
Wheras I think I’m just overly cautious. My parents have a great marriage. They’re as in love today as they were when they met each other at a Motley Crue concert 23 years ago. I’ve just seen enough of the BS in society to know that I take marriage more seriously than that - and while I can honestly say that I plan on spending the rest of my life with my boyfriend, I also don’t want to rush something that may ruin what we have (which is, indeed, special). I don’t intend on getting married, because I don’t want to be lumped into that ever-increasing group of young’ns that rushed it and failed, but in, say, five, ten years, I don’t think I’ll be adverse to the idea, assuming we’re still together, in love, and planning on staying that way.
(Although we’re so eloping if we do; planning the seating at my best friend’s wedding was pure hell and I’m not going through that again)
Not to put any words in your mouth, but surely you’re not suggesting that hasty marriage, then kids, THEN discovering that they don’t want to be together is a better option? I would rather test-drive the car and find out it rides like a haywagon than buy it and be stuck with the payments.
Unmarried people are as fully capable of committed, loving relationships for long periods of time as are those who are married. Sanctity is a concept foisted on us by organized religion, IMO, but let’s not start that argument here. My present spouse and I were married by a JP and things are just peachy. The only reason we got married at all was because we were in the Foreign Service and had no hope of being assigned together unless we were hitched.
That’s not really how I read that post. In the first place, marriage doesn’t have to be “hasty”. In fact, in spite of the fact that my in-laws have been happily married for 53 years, following a 3-month courtship, I think taking your time is a good idea. In the second place, marriage doesn’t have to be immediately followed by kids. My husband and I had an 18-month-old when we got married. Didn’t have the second one until we’d been married for almost three years. We were married 12 years when we had the third one. I know of at least one happily married couple, married for ten years or more, who have deliberately not had kids, and not going to have kids. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, you know.
While I never had a debate class in high school, most of my teachers invited debate. One day in 12th grade we were talking about marriage (the divorce law was a very recent development) and reached the following conclusion, which may or may not be true…
“Many people, when they think about marrying their bf/gf, whom they may have known for as little as a week and actually seen only for two hours, they get all starry eyed… they think of having a big party paid by their parents and of happily ever after… they think about how gorgeous this person looks on a saturday night at the dance. They don’t think about morning breath and toothaches and children crying. In order to work, a marriage has to be undertaken by people who know about morning breath.”
“Yeah, and about paying the bills!” class chorus: AAAAMEN
Those feelings of giddy infatuation and knee-trembling passion mellow after a time. It’s inevitable. Anyone who doesn’t think that it does has been watching too many romantic movies. Friendship and mutual respect are what lasts and holds a good marriage together.
Personally, I think this is the cause of many divorces. Couples somehow have a vague expectation that married life will be nothing but an endless honeymoon and when those feelings begin to cool, they aren’t happy any longer. They feel that something must be “missing” and when a person comes along who stirs those feelings up again, they think the problem must be with their partner. So they leave, settle in with the new partner only to begin the cycle anew. They’ll never be happy because they’re expecting something that really doesn’t exist.
Quoth Lissa (happily married to her best friend for almost eight years.)
Of course not. The old fashioned term was “courtship”, a time when you got to know the person better and discover their likes and dislikes. My wife and I dated for two years before we married and waited another two years before we got pregnant.
In my post I stated:
I know many people married by JPs (and one by an Elvis impersonator) who have had long, successful marriages. I know many people that were married by priests, rabbis, ministers and, in one case, a Buddhist monk that have had miserable marriages followed by equally miserable divorces.
My issue is that when you are living together, there is no sense of permanence. You share a house, utilities, bills. But, if things get crappy, you can just pick up your marbles and skip town. If you have kids you are responsible to them, but not to the person who you shared ups and downs with. Designating someone as a “domestic partner” does not make you a committed person.
My friend lived with a girl for 5 years, the whole time saying that a piece of paper didn’t mean anything. When they were both laid off and were fighting all the time, he decided he didn’t want to deal with her crap anymore and left. He moved back to his parents. Six months later he moved in with another woman. Did that for two years. Similar shit, same outcome.
I’m not saying that married people don’t fight and get frustrated and want to pack up. But being married is a legal contract binding two people together. It makes severing the union more difficult and expensive. It causes people to think before they get into the marriage and think before they try to get out.
I have to say that I don’t think very highly of that friend. My boyfriend and I have fought, have gotten into real arguments, over our finances. We’ve never once thought about severing our relationship just because we have no money for food or gas or cigarettes or rent. We just buck up, pawn something, and hug each other and say “I love you.” That piece of paper doesn’t mean shit to us - our relationship, our love, does. It’s a moral issue between the two of us, not a contract issue.
Sure they’ll be happy. Just not in marriage. Some people just like the excitment of a new realtionship or meeting someone for the first time or whatever. Marriage might not be for them.
Another thing I thought I’d point out is that some people don’t like being told what to do or having to do things they do want to. Marriage might not be for those folks.
I think another important factor to making a marriage work is realizing (preferably before the vows) that you are choosing, when you take those vows, to love that person for the rest of your life. I don’t mean that you are choosing to “be in love” or feel the romantic love that our society thinks is the be-all-end-all. I mean that you are choosing to act with love toward that person every day for the rest of your life, whether you feel like it or not. *
A lot of Christians that I have known think that 1 Corinthians 13 (“Love is patient, love is kind…” etc.) describes how they will feel when they are in love with someone, and wait for that feeling to transform them into a patient, kind person. I think this is completely backwards; love is what you do, and if I love my husband I will do my best to be patient, kind, and all the rest, every day, even when he’s driving me nuts. That’s the choice and the promise I made when I married him. I don’t always succeed, of course, but I try – and I find that a lot of the time, acting as if I’m not annoyed at him will make me actually not be annoyed at him.
I second what someone said upthread; it really helps if you like the person, because it’s pretty much guaranteed that you won’t always feel in love with them.
*Exceptions possible, of course, especially for things like abuse. I don’t think one should stay in a bad relationship just out of cussedness. I mean, if you hate the person, and act like it, the vows are already broken, aren’t they?
Sure-- if they* realize* that marriage isn’t for them. Some people just keep trying it over and over.
Some people see marriage as an almost inevitable destination in a serious relationship. They’re uncomfortable with the notion of serial monogomy-- they feel like they* have* to commit. They fully intend to stay with their current partner forever but their discontent starts to erode their determination. They then move on to the next partner, again, fully intending to stay with them forever but find that sadly familiar unhappiness creep over them.
One woman I know has been married four times. She’s now in her late forties and feeling desperate to “have someone” again. Not for a fling, mind you. She likes the idea of growing old together but no one thus far has managed to give her what she wants. (She’d consider the idea of just staying with someone until the spark is gone as being “slutty.”)
