I believe it.
Actually, falling in the 35-45 age bracket, I probably still do act like a ‘sophomore’ (bizarre term, I still have to look these up) although with more watching TV. In fact I’m about to watch a 60 minute documentary about milk. I can’t imagine I would have done that aged 25.
I have some points to raise wrt this thread but I am leaving them for a bit while more replies come in
Are you sure about that? I thought statistics clearly indicated that most divorces occur early in the marriage.
Actually, in my circle divorce hasn’t been that prevalent. There have been no divorces at all in my entire extended family, for example.
I was in my mid 40s when I met my wife.
Ed
sophomore
n. A student in the second year of study at a 4 year college or secondary school
See also
*sophomoric *
*adj. *Exhibiting great immaturity and lack of judgment
From my annecdotal experience, I have seen the entire gamut of relationships.
The only conclusion I can draw is that 1) the grass is always greener for just about everyone and 2) you should be honest with yourself and your partner and do what is going to make you and your partner happiest, regardless of what other people think or what you think you are “supposed to do”.
Did you check out those statistic about length of marriage and divorce, though?
Well, another refutation–married four years at this point.
Advantages response:
No religious obligations for either of us
Negligible tax benefits
Neither of us is making enough solo to be gold-dug.
Disadvantages response:
We have an open/polyamorous marriage–can go out on the town AND have a stable home life
Paid less than $2k for 120 people to celebrate the wedding–bbq in the park
She has her office, I have mine, and we have joint spaces–and we respect each other’s office privacy
Commitment is supposed to be a bad thing? Frankly, I like not having to worry about finding/impressing a date to know I’ll have a snugglebuddy later that night.
“Most”? Most couples I know who’ve divorced do so amicably enough or are evenly matched enough that the alimony burden is negligible, and child support is what it is and I can’t think of many people I respect who complain about paying it.
I’m having more sex now than when we were on our freakin’ honeymoon.
This, like commitment, isn’t so much a disadvantage, because ideally you’re marrying someone you like to “put up with”.
Being married has been one of the more rewarding things in my life.
From my perspective–I have a guaranteed shoulder to cry on, someone to get dinner with and share a movie or a car on a roller-coaster or a trip to wherever. I have my best friend in my house and sharing everything with me. I have a great sex partner who’s spent years learning my needs and wants, and vice versa. I have a fellow contributor to the biggest expenses in life–housing, children.
What’s NOT to like?
Frankly, you sound like you’re mis-focusing some existing bitterness with the opposite sex onto the idea of marriage in general. Look at it from my perspective–I have a woman who I find incredibly hot who helps pay the bills and I basically get to screw whenever I want. Basically, too, I agree with msmith–what makes you (and possibly any partners you might have) happy? Do that.
*43% of first marriages end within 15 years.
The median duration of a marriage is 7.2 years.
Red states have a divorce rate 27% higher than blue states. (I found this interesting).
75% of all divorced people re-marry, half of them within three years.
65% of all second marriages fail.
80% of divorced men and 75% of women remarry whether or not they have children, most within 3 years.
ONE in TWELVE couples will be heading for a divorce court after 24 months - more than double the figure for 7 years.*
In case he didn’t, from here
On edit - different source, same basic message.
Basically, the message I get is that over time, a lot of people get divorced and it takes some people longer than others to finally reach that point where they say “I can’t take this shit no more!”
Nice catch. 
No, unfortunately not. That would have been insufferably cool. Have you ever seen Fools Rush In? The Elvis in that movie was our Elvis.
Because it would cost several thousand dollars in legal fees to get all the rights we got from a $27 marriage license. That negligible amount of money bought us the right to decide each other’s medical care, hospital visitation, and make funereal arrangements. These rights are recognized and respected everywhere in the world, unlike some of the legal documents our gay friends have had drawn up to gain similar rights. And we’re able to have one family health insurance policy instead of two more expensive individual plans. Even if marriage has no emotional or social meaning to you, in and of itself, those protections have a definite logical advantage over 20 years of shacking up.
But honestly, we got married because we wanted to be married. It was important to us for emotional (not religious) reasons. We like being committed to one another legally as well as emotionally. There are downsides, sure. There are downsides and tradeoffs to everything in life. If you have pets, you gotta feed 'em and clean up their shit and vacuum up their hair and all that. If you have a car to get you from place to place in air conditioned comfort, you gotta pay insurance and buy gas and replace the brakes and tires and all that. If you have a job to pay all your bills and put food on the table, you have to get up earlier than you want to some mornings, and wear clothes you maybe don’t feel like wearing that day, and put up coworkers you don’t necessarily like and all that. But pets and cars and jobs are overall worth it. So are spouses.
Just to correct what appears to be a misconception, those who practice their religion (as opposed to those who only profess it) tend, on average, to experience higher levels of marital satisfaction, as well as to divorce at lower rates (cite) at least in the US.
As for the rest -
2. Favourable tax treatment - this has been covered fairly well.
3. Excellent if you’re a gold-digger - I am not sure what this means. My wife made much more than I did when we married, and for the first three or four years after that. Perhaps I should have thought of myself as a gold-digger.
Disadvantages:
Me? 18 days shy of twenty seven years. I am hoping to hold out till then.*
Weddings almost always extremely expensive - Methinks “almost always” is a bit of exaggeration. YYMV.
Lose privacy - Not sure what you mean. The great challenge is how to spend more time with the Lovely and Talented Mrs. Shodan, not issues related to too much time. Again, YMMV.
Commitment - *Did you mean to put this under Disadvantages? ISTM it should go under Advantages. *
ENORMOUS cost when divorce occurs. Partner steals most of your money - You misspelt “if”. And I don’t see how this is a disadvantage to both partners in a divorce.
Sex disappears by almost everyone’s account - Not in my experience. We had a thread about it recently - perhaps I can dig up a link if you are interested.
Greater ‘obligation’ to put up with partner - Again, not sure what you mean by this. If you just mean I am more committed now than with a casual dating partner, or someone I lived with, that would fall under the heading of Commitment, and therefore not (to me) a Disadvantage.
Regards,
Shodan
It is a lot easier to dump someone you no longer care for than to find someone who will care for you.
I don’t have a cite for this, but a professor once told our class that people who get married tend to have much more sex than people who remain single their entire lives.
[quote=“Angry Lurker, post:32, topic:494273”]
Most of the reasons folk here are giving in support of marriage are actually reasons in favour of long term relationships.
[QUOTE]
So, are you also against long-term relationships?
Interesting, or a useful club with which to beat supposedly religious people over the head with?
The increasing life expectancy is largely due to child mortality rates going down. Since so few children get married, one shouldn’t ascribe an increase in life expectancy to lead to an increase in marriages for any individual adult.
That would only be true if it was quoted as 50% of marriages end in divorce every year. I’ve only ever heard it as an overall figure - marriages as a whole have a 50% chance of ending in divorce. Of course, the method is a little suspect - when you’re making a point about how divorce rates have changed over time, it’s a little silly to compare the current crop of marriages to the last crop’s divorces.
As a fun exercise, if 50% of marriages did end in divorce every year, there would need to be as many weddings as existing marriages every year, and that same number of divorces. I don’t think anyone’s claiming that.
:smack: Expect, not ascribe. That’ll teach me to swap my clauses…
Either way, I’ve been hearing for some time that the divorce rate has been going down for several years now. It isn’t 50% any more, though it’s still over 40%.
I don’t have any particular anti-religeon ax to grind. But yes, I would have thought that more conservative religeous types would be less likely to get divorced.
There may be other factors though. Liberals may be less likely to get married out of a sense of religeous or cultural obligation (or at all for that matter) and are therefore maybe more likely to have lasting marriages. But that’'s pure conjecture on my part.
