Well, in my experience most of the relationships I see are solid, if normally flawed. I really disagree that “most of the time” these relationships (marriages, step-parents) are flawed and that’s the rule that the happy ones are the exception too.
Sadly, it’s obviously you’ve been legitimately burned, and I think it colors your perception of how things normally are.
That is almost certainly true but I have one of those quiet interpersonal styles that causes a lot of people to confess things to me just because they know I won’t get upset about it, judge them or betray them. That induces a consistent stream of people, both male and female, that admit things that doesn’t match their public projection and even their spouses do not know. It has happened for decades so I don’t think it is some fluke. The people I am referring to come from all over the country and are from all socio-economic groups so I don’t think it is much selection bias either.
Ok.
No, it is not OK. I just want these things to work as advertised or find a better design. There is infinite room for improvement because the current ones aren’t working for huge segments of the population.
Gosh, that is just so darn nice of you. Bless your little heart.
Marriage is an artificial legal construct that has already changed a great deal over time. There is nothing romantic about it anymore than a mortgage. It is just a legal agreement between you, your partner and the state. The current incarnation is very new and there is no reason it has to stay the way it is.
The romance and friendship part is completely separate from that and you can do it with or without a legal marriage. I agree with msmith537. Marriage in the Northeast U.S. today at least today is mostly about project management and there are always new projects. I am not kidding (no pun intended) about that. It often requires project management software and all of your time to keep up with it all and that is just for two kids in primary school. There is no romance involved. It is a complex logistical operation just to make sure it all works and you can keep your job to keep the money flowing in to support the whole house of cards. In the 1800’s, the equivalent may have been getting your family across the Oregon Trail without everyone dying so I am not complaining but family dynamics were never meant to be fun.
I wish it wasn’t that way but that is the reality for lots of people.
No, my “ok” was refering to your belief that you have a unique insight into marriage and step-parenting that the majority of us are not privileged to know. I have no way to refute it, but I’m not ready to dismiss my entire world view on your say so.
Of course marriage isn’t perfect and isn’t for everyone. No one claims it is. But it’s also not the shackled, slavery you described.
I don’t believe I have unique insight into marriage and step parenting. I only have my own experiences and what countless people have told me in confidence and what I have observed.
You may be mostly correct in that there are a whole more happy marriages than I assume. However, it could also be true that there are a lot more bad situations than you assume. Those types of things are hard to quantify because they are hidden by definition. Both of us could be correct in most regards without any contradiction. One thing I will promise you is the closed door problem is a lot more prevalent than naive people believe and plenty of people admit to it if you give them an opportunity.
“Countless” people? Really?
I find myself wondering which is more probable: that @Shagnasty’s world view is a legitimate reality for a majority, or whether he is simply a magnet for those types of people?
Happy people don’t go on about it, even to the most sympathetic ear. I don’t walk around talking about my happy marriage. I did share with my closest friends when we had troubles, but I don’t go in about it when it’s good.
I have plenty of close friends who confide in me. Most of their troubles are personal, not worn on their sleeve, and tend to be situational or temporary. Even people who have left bad marriages often are looking to marry again, so it was the wrong pairing, not the problem with marriage itself. Many have remarried and are happy. I’m not naive. I’ve had friends in spectacularly bad marriages that either got better, through therapy or circumstances improved, or they divorced.
And fwiw, you are claiming special insight. Based on the types of intimate conversations you claim, in which people who are acting happy on the outside are revealing dark feelings, you know truths that rest of us are naive to.
That is the real question and I don’t pretend to know the answer. I truly believe that my ex-inlaws have a happy marriage but they have 3 houses in one of the most desirable addresses in Boston, a 300 acre weekend farm in New Hampshire and a house in the Virgin Islands. They have a fairytale life but I could never hope to keep up with that. If that is what it takes to keep a happy wife, I want no part of that.
The people I am referring to people that come from all walks of life including the sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads. They are all telling me the same thing the same way the great philosophers Beavis and Butthead proclaimed…‘this sucks’.
There has got to be a better model.
Heh. Reminds me of when I worked in tech support: nobody ever called in to tell us how happy they were… If you were basing your perceptions on a day in a call center, you’d most likely come to the conclusion that everyone in the world hated their service.
LOL I love this thread. I want to hear more about the Mussolini connection to your wife.
My mom and dad have been happily married for nearly thirty-five years, and they have none of those things.
I’m just saying… IME, people with similar core personality traits, regardless of whatever their occupations or hobbies or “walks of life” happen to be, tend to be drawn to people who have similar core personality traits. Maybe you’re just a magnet for miserable people? Like, my marriage failed fairly spectacularly, but I don’t blame that on the institution of marriage.
I definitely draw in deviants although I do not believe I am one myself. I am sitting here looking at a family photo of a family picture of one of my friends on vacation in Mexico that looks beautiful until she was killed two days later in a murder-suicide by her husband. That is odd enough but it is the 3rd time it has happened to people I have known well and I know an abnormal number of murderers and other felons personally as well. One of the reasons that I fled my home town area was because of that type of violence and safety concerns.
I am not attracted to boring, stable people of either sex and the outliers certainly find each other. If I never had to go to a couple’s dinner party again, it would be too soon. On the other hand, I have gotten permission to take people’s wives out and do things that the husbands weren’t interested in. That statement alone is all kinds of wrong but that is the way that it works. We are going to climb a tower, not screw on top of it.
As mentioned, people in good relationships tend not to brag or be too outspoken about them. Actions speak louder than words and all that.
My parents have told me they are each other best friend, but they don’t say it all the time, much less to strangers or in public. It does not need to be said either because everyone else picks up on that. And they do had or have their own other separate BFF, but their closest is each other.
Thank you! Bless you heart too and give my best to y’all.
So…The Breakfast Club?
Our marriage has become a lot better since we switched to an Agile methodology and replaced our current nanny with a certified scrum master.
But seriously, a large part of marriage with kids does involve a lot of task and project management. We still make time for fun and romance, but with kids there is just a lot of stuff that has to get done regardless if you feel like doing it or not.
Shallower in different ways perhaps.
Look up Count Ciano. It was her great uncle that married Mussolini’s daughter. He pissed off Mussolini and was executed for it which is probably another good reason not to marry or at least keep your dictator father-in-law happy. They already had kids before he was executed so my daughters are fairly close cousins to Mussolini’s descendants and they have visited them in Italy a few times. Some people in the family are much more closely related than that
Dude, everything in your life involves a lot of PM, same as everything in mine involves objectives (if it doesn’t, I need to invent them) and everything in my control-freak sister-in-law’s involves stapled-in-place plans. It’s the ways we are. You receive input from the wife and modify the current approach; people without your background respond to their partner’s feedback; SiL would be upset for weeks if there is a farting noise at a time when she hadn’t defined one.
And I can make fun of you because damnit, some day I want to have your job 