When the Sun turns 18 and leaves the Solar System, will Jupiter have enough gravitational pull to keep the other planets from leaving the system?
This IS a serious question.
I asked, in essence, the same question in #19 above, but notice that Shagnasty did not answer, choosing only to answer someone who sort of agreed with him. He won’t answer, because his answer is probably that he will discard the wife after the kids are gone, and this will make him appear like a callous jerk, and he wants to keep pretending like he is righteous.
I think that in a great marriage, which we have, you feel no requirement to check in or consult with the other person, but you do anyhow because you want to share. I’ve never thought of marriage as a vocation before, but it makes perfect sense to me.
Our kids diminished our freedom - as expected. Our work does. Marriage - never. It just increased our freedom since together we do things we’d never do on our own.
Or vice versa. Do not assume that kids always outlive their parents.
You know something? Kids learn a lot of things when you teach them…and even when you’re not teaching them, they learn. Your lack of love towards your spouse teaches your kid that it’s ok to use people and be deceitful as long as it fulfills her needs without regard to her S.O. This in turn will lead to a miserable life for some other toddler “out there” who will, by chance, become that used spouse years from now. Hopefully, your wife will temper your daughters future characteristics with her own love and devotion towards you and your daughter and your daughter may pick up on that…but right now, it sounds like a 50-50 prop bet of a future failed relationship down the road. Hmmmmm…sounds like a pattern is developing here.
I do love my wife, don’t get me wrong, Most of my posts are more generic in nature and not specifically about us. I have no idea what will happen when the kids leave home. That won’t be for at least another 16 years and a lot can happen in that amount of time. If we did get divorced, I would never get married again which ties into my earlier comments about marriage being a legal contract first and foremost. It took my grandfather who is now in his 80’s two failed marriages to figure that out. He switched to simply shacking up with his two later love interest and still does with the second one. That way, breaking up can be fast and you get to keep your stuff and keep the lawyers away.
Clearly my idea of marriage is very different from Shagnasty’s, although kudos for upfront honesty about why you made the deal. I married only because my husband was the friend I never wanted to be without. Not a co-depedant thing at all - we’ve spent extended periods apart and been perfectly functional, although I always prefer with him to without him. Frankly, he’s better than no husband at all, and since I never wanted any husband at all, that’s high praise indeed.
I don’t have or want kids, I simply enjoy his company (including the sexuals), and know that I am a far better person with him than without him. I’ve been inspired to stretch far beyond what I assumed were my limited abilities only because it would have been embarassing not to, what with him being so wonderful and talented. Basically I’m inclined to laziness and pessimism, and he give me a reason to look beyond my stunted self-image (now much improved, thank you).
Meanwhile, he has made serious headway in two careers and is embarking on a third, something I doubt he could have done entirely on his own. It’s worked out great for both of us. Plus, he’s the only person whose company I never grow weary of. Well, him and the cats.
This is my experience as well. Marriage in no way limited my freedom. On the other hand, having a baby drastically limited my freedom and my husband’s (but not quite as much as it did mine).
As for calling in, that’s just common courtesy. When we were married and childless, calling in prevented my husband from worrying; when we had a baby (especially when our son was much younger), calling in let my husband know when he’d get some relief or gave him an opportunity to let me know if I needed to pick something up on my way.
My husband and I have always had separate interests - we still do. That’s what gives us something to talk about when we come together at the end of the day. Neither of us feels the need to hang out constantly. In fact, I’d probably kill him if I didn’t get some time to myself once in a while. But we got married because we liked each other’s company and we still do (being in love doesn’t hurt, either).
On the one hand, I’m not against marriages of convenience, though I would never want to be in one. I don’t want to feel like I’m someone’s brood mare, there to provide children and little else. On the other hand, I don’t think that a marriage that is a love match equals hanging out together 100% of the time. Everyone needs their space and no one can rely on just one person for everything - they have to also rely on themselves and their friends and family. I’m not a great believer in soul mates because I’ve never met someone and just known we were meant for each other. But I couldn’t imagine being with anyone else other than my husband. I wouldn’t want to, either.
My thoughts… my thoughts…
I think that a healthy marriage is free from co-dependency. I view marriage not as two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle coming together, but more akin to two circles overlapping closer and closer until concentricity. Those two circles are completely whole and separate yet also completely together. I think a healthy marriage can be viewed as one of the joyful paradoxes in life, right up there along with ‘those who wish to save their life must lose it.’
I hate it when people talk about their SO as saying “Hir completes me.” “Hir fills a hole in me.” While I feel it’s perfectly OK and probably healthy to have a partner that compliments oneself, and perhaps it’s just semantics, I still feel that the above statements belie either sehnsucht or codependency.
I don’t because I lost a young daughter and have two left. I know how it feels and that is a big reason why I think that way. Something like that will almost destroy you but also cause you to re-evaluate your deepest priorities and what they mean.
I don’t know if you meant it this way, but your description about concentricity makes it sound like by the nature of marriage, one party is lesser than the other. Is this the intended meaning, or am I reading this statement wrong?
I think I agree with your post for the vast majority of it. I am not married, but we’ve been together 6 years, and lived together almost 4. We’re currently engaged, and without child(ren) so take it as you will.
I believe I agree with just about everything except for:
Marriage in no way limited my freedom.
I know I do not have some freedoms that I once had, though I may never have wanted to use them. I am not free to meet some other person on a whim, and run off to have a trist on a moments notice. I am not free to take off one night on the drop of a hat and stay out for days on end. et cetra…
However, these are not things that I miss for the most part, and the benifits of my fulfilling relationship far outpace the relatively minor restrictions that it has placed on me. Infact, I would say that not only do I not miss the freedoms I once enjoyed I do not want most of them at all. I’m happy and content with the wonderful woman who decided to put up with my crap, and I’m enjoying it though it isn’t always roses and just deserts…
Different strokes for different folks. My ex- was the sort who liked lots of time to herself; I was not. Inevitably, we clashed.
I think it’s important to know who you are and what you want and see if the prospective partner is of the same mind. I could post what I’m looking for but I don’t think that means everybody else (or anybody else) is looking for the same or should be.
Ah, no that was not my intent at all. Maybe the metaphor needs work.
Actually, I thought it was a beautiful analogy. Maybe I need work. 
If it makes you feel better, I’m a little surprised by some of the reactions to your honest answers.
Nobody here really knows the relationship you have with your wife. I think you’re someone who would have enjoyed marriage more with a different partner - someone a bit aloof - but you’ve made your choice, and it looks to me like you are honoring it.
You get no grief from me.
There are probably as many reasons for marriage as there are people in the world. None of them are wrong as long as it works for both parties. Also, the reason you STAY married might be completely different from the reason you GOT married. Again, if it works for both parties, it’s perfectly legitimate. A working, happy marriage may have nothing to do with love, just as a loving relationship can exist without marriage. It’s all a crapshoot anyway. The changes people go through are inevitable. You’re lucky if you both grow in the same direction without someone feeling hurt or left out or confused.
My belated symapthy.
Now I can better understand the way you view your wife and kids. Let me ask you this then:
Did you feel the same way you did before losing your child?
While I find myself agreeing with portions of Shagnasty’s POV, one issue I have with it is that “marriage has little to do with love.” I couldn’t stand the restrictions of such an intimate living situation if I didn’t love my husband. I lived alone for 10 years before I was married by choice and felt no reason to end that solitude except that, well, married people are expected to live together, and we wanted to hang out more (we lived about 40 miles apart). It’s been very challenging to deal with the quirks of daily life and cohabitation, and it’s not particularly in my personality to enjoy that. So it takes love for me to have perspective on it and I couldn’t do it for just a friend. I certainly, surely, definitely would not want to have to raise a child with someone I didn’t love greatly and with whom I solely had a business arrangement. I could if I had to but I wouldn’t set out to do it that way.
OTOH, I also find this statement disingenuous: “Marriage in no way limited my freedom.” Sure it does. There are things you can do when you’re single that you can’t do when you’re married unless you don’t care about the promises you made. You may voluntarily be restricting your freedom as a conscious, loving trade-off for all the benefits. You may be giving up things that aren’t particularly important to you, like how household money is spent, or having sex with multiple partners, etc. Those may be freedoms you gladly gave up, but they are freedoms nonetheless. I feel like I make compromises and sacrifices small and large every day and it’s worth it. When it’s not, that’s when marriages fail.
As for the just going out without saying where or when you will return… it’s kind of inconsiderate. I don’t give my husband an itinerary, nor do I get angry if he’s home late, but things work best when we say, “I’m going here, I will be back around this time,” so the other person can plan accordingly. When my husband is going out with his friends, all I want to hear is, “Matt and I are going out, I’ll be home late.” That’s it. But if he just didn’t come home after work and it started to get late, I’d worry, and that’s not necessary if one sentence could alleviate it.
My brother said, “A marriage can survive without love, but it can’t survive without respect.”
I wonder how people who have been married for a long time view this. When two first meet, maybe we’re horny as bandicoots, and maybe the discoveries about the other person are intriguing…but with time the relationship must become pretty mundane. So what is that love after 5, 10, 25 years? Is it the same or has it changed? Should it have a different label than “love” or not?
For me, that statement is true. I never WANTED to have multiple partners, so that was never even a consideration. I’ve always told people I loved where I was going and when so that wasn’t a consideration, either. And both my husband and I are stingy and have no debt. Also, we’ve kept our finances separate (mostly out of laziness) and have agreed-upon things we each automatically pay for, but don’t tell each other about personal expenses - not out of a need to hide them but because they’re so negligible and we trust each other. I suppose you could say I gave up the ability to have multiple partners or the ability to start a new relationship or spend my money irresponsibly, but that’s never been part of my character, so I’ve never felt restricted. So, again, that statement is accurate for me.
Having a kid, on the other hand, introduced new expenses, further time constraints, dictated when I’d wake up, how much time I get to myself, my personal space, what happens with my job, eating schedules - everything. It’s not all bad by any means, and I still get to do the things I want to, but the way I look at it, marriage had virtually no affect on my freedom while my son had the most significant impact on my freedom in my entire life.