in many couples, a division of labor that was unequal but acceptably so before the kids arrive gets a lot more extreme once they’re there
you may never have had the chance to notice that your spouse is the kind of person who will give candy to the kid a minute after you’ve said “no, we’re going to have dinner in half an hour; dinner first, candy second.”
One of my brothers has been their children’s primary caretaker for several years; he had to point out to his wife that she was doing exactly that kind of undermining, after years of telling her own mother not to do it.
I would like to add onto this, a woman who works around kids all day say as a teacher, whom you would THINK would be great with her own kids, often isnt.
When my wife and I started having kids she basically handed them over to me partly because after working with other kids all day, she didnt want to work with her own.
I don’t think it’s fair to just blame the man. I also know plenty of men who married women who expected to be treated like princesses. I suspect that their divorce may have been due to some combination of their lifestyle not being the fairytale they expected, or they found their financially successful man boring and wanted something more exciting.[/QUOTE]
Or in one case I know, alot of the husbands “wealth” came from his parents. Like the cabin by the lake, the lavish vacations, the parents fancy home. Well later the parents finances fell on hard times. No more vacations and the cabin got sold. The husband had a decent job but not up to what she hoped for and that lead to trouble.
Two of my coworkers were married this year. They only started dating because the female “was bored, so I might as well” (her actual words) while the male wanted to stop living like a frat boy.
They seem happy and I wish them all that happiness but I’m not the only one who wonders if it’ll last.
And why they don’t notice after the first kid - sometimes it’s not a problem until you’ve already had more than one. My husband and I didn’t start arguing about the division of labor until our kids reached school age. He liked to bowl - a lot . Like at least three nights a week. Which didn’t bother me at all before we had kids , and annoyed me somewhat when they were little. It really started to bother me when they got to school age and started to have activities that they needed to be taken to a few nights a week. He did cut back on the bowling, but there was no way for me to know it would be an issue until after the second kid was born. In part, because I didn’t know he wouldn’t just automatically cut back on his bowling when there was more work to do , but also because I didn’t find out how much time was going to be involved with practices and games ,etc until the second kid was about 5.
My own armchair/half-assed/broad brush guess is that lesbians (and women in general) are more likely to want a stable relationship rather than merely one-night stands, and will take things to the next level more quickly than hetero couples and much more quickly than gay men (there’s an old joke along those lines that goes: Q. What do lesbians bring on a second date? A. Luggage). The variable here is the speed at which the commitment is made. Start setting up a household too early and you can get stuck with someone with unpleasant traits you hadn’t discovered before. The more time people spend getting used to each other before getting serious and/or married, the more likely that the unworkable relationships will get sifted out in time.
Obviously there are plenty of exceptions to that - my wife and I only dated about a year before moving in together, and 2.5 years before getting married, and we’re now on 27 years and counting. But we also have the benefit of coming from stable households - my and my wife’s parents’ marriages are on 57 and 58 years respectively and still going strong.
…and that’s a better reason why we’re on 27 years and counting. Marriage and parenthood both need to be joint projects that both parties work equally hard to maintain. If you think the other half is going to do all the scutwork, you’re probably doomed.
I think there are far too many variables to pinpoint a “reason” for divorce. Each one is a result of a combination of factors, some obvious and some not - even to the participants. Take my wife (please!) and I. In my immediate family (parents, 2 siblings) all are married and there have been no divorces. None of my parent’s siblings have been divorced, either. I have to go out to the cousin/niece level to find a divorce in my family. In my wife’s immediate family (parents, 1 sibling) all have been married at least twice and divorced at least once. The actual marriage count for those three people is in the double digits.
What makes my wife so different from her immediate family when it comes to marriage? What makes me similar to mine?
I can point to some differences between the families related to religion/spirituality and alcohol use but she was raised in the same home as her brother with the same mother and dad/stepdad combos. He’s been married at least 3 times, she just once. What accounts for the difference in attitude? I don’t know, and even if I did it would likely translate only loosely to any other couple. Some couples can check off every “good marriage” data point and still get divorced while others fail every checkpoint but stay married for a lifetime. Humans are complicated as individuals, and complicated [sup]2[/sup] as a couple.
Back to the original question in the OP, at least among the men I know, yes, divorce has scared many smart, successful men off of marriage, and it’s because you don’t know what you / your prospective spouse’s priorities and character will be after 20 years, and because the penalties for not being able to see 20 years into the future and choosing “wrong” are so absurdly high.
On top of that, the rather minor upsides of marriage are mostly disaster planning / legacy stuff that really only applies at death or debility.
So let’s take the 40% figure above - there’s a 40% chance your marriage is going to end in divorce. Of the 60% that don’t, at least half of those are probably net-negative when it comes to happiness and quality of life, on balance.
Yes, everyone here are notable exceptions whose spouses descended from heaven on gossamer wings and whose very presence inspires angelic hymns and paroxysms of joy. I’m talking about everyone else. You know who I mean, you see the quality of your friends, relatives, and colleagues’ marriages.
So the marriage bargain goes:
For men:
[ul]
[li]40% chance you’ll lose half of everything, access to your kids if any, and pay a decade or two of child support and alimony[/li]
[li]30% chance of being miserable and having your marriage actually net detract from your happiness and quality of life.[/li][/ul]
For women:
[ul]
[li]You’ll get to do all the housework and child-rearing AND work a full time job, and there’s a 40% chance you’ll be so miserable you’d rather divorce than have your husband keep messing stuff up on those fronts. After the divorce, your standard of living will drop noticeably on average.[/li]
[li]30% chance of being miserable and having your marriage actually net detract from your happiness and quality of life.[/li][/ul]
So what exactly does anyone get from marriage, that you wouldn’t get through a long-term cohabiting relationship? Some beneficial death and debility defaults and for a small subset of married folk, slightly lower taxes? Is that really worth the costs above?
The thing that I really don’t understand is among the younger cohort I know, the men see this basic reality and for the most part don’t want to get married, but the women all want to get married and actively push for it.
Have you been married? If not, then you may not realize what the benefits are. It’s not just the practical aspects. The real benefit is the emotional contentment you feel with the other person. You may say that you can have the same thing in a long-term relationship, but unless you’ve been married, you don’t really know.
Most people view and feel differently about married relationships vs long-term ones. Your family will look to the other person more of a family member rather than just someone you’re dating. You can be more open and honest with your partner since they have stated that their intention is to be with you forever. And even though sometimes it doesn’t last, at least your partner made clear their intention at one time.
Being married is like creating a new family unit. A long-term relationship seems more about having a good time until something better comes along.
If you’re worried about losing 1/2 your stuff in a divorce, the solution is to make sure that there is financial equity in the relationship. If you are both making similar salaries, then it’s a 50/50 split anyway.
Losing access to your kids is not an issue. When you break up, you don’t get to be with your kids 100% of the time regardless of whether you were married or not. A custody arrangement will need to be worked out regardless of the type of relationship.
If a man is just looking for a combination escort/maid/cook, they shouldn’t get married (and probably shouldn’t be in a long-term relationship). If a woman is just looking for a combination ATM/handyman/flatterer, they shouldn’t get married (and probably shouldn’t be in a long-term relationship). But if someone wants a life-long, emotionally close relationship and understands that can get messy at times, marriage is a good choice.
If your first relationship was that bad, it sounds like it’s more because of the person rather than you were actually married. If you had instead just lived together, would your relationship have been better and you’d still be together?
Again, you can avoid marriage, but in order to avoid the complications of having or dissolving an intimate relationship you have to avoid intimate relationships.
Provided there’s no kids, ALL of those risks go away with a LTR. If you or your spouses interests and priorities change - as the 40%-70% failure rate seems it indicate is quite common - you can go your separate ways much more easily.
Men don’t lose half of everything, women don’t have to put up with a bum who never lifts a finger for housework. And each involved party in an LTR has less social opprobrium and pressure and barriers to end the relationship, unlike marriage, the ending of which entails lawyers, paperwork, and social opprobrium.
Kids do indeed complicate things, and men are rightfully on the hook for child support (and alimony in the case of a non-working spouse) in the case of a split. But that split is easier for both parties, and so there was less misery-years and less inflicting a bad relationship on the kids for the years you tried to stick it out but didn’t succeed at.
I’m not against LTR’s, I’m in one now and have been in various multi-year LTR’s for most of my adult life. I’m against marriage as an institution which provides very few benefits at a staggeringly high failure rate and cost of failure.
Sure, it’s a noble aspiration - a relationship that lasts til death do you part. The enviable “gossamer wings from heaven” thing that so many here apparently have.
But in empirical terms, it’s got a huge failure rate and staggering costs, in dollars and misery and more. And you can still have meaningful long term relationships that take that into account and make it easier to not be miserable for both parties by avoiding it. Why shouldn’t we do that?
In terms of the ideal sexual/romantic relationship I think people should form, I have no preference. LTR, marriage, poly, master/slave, triangles, the more the merrier. I actually wish there was a greater variety of sexual/romantic relationship formats out there to choose from, so people could find whatever the best fit is for them and their partner. Because the dominant default option of “marriage” which 90% of people think of as the only option has a 40%-70% failure rate and huge costs.
If we just lived together I would have jumped ship after 5 years. “Marriage” made that more difficult, and the actual divorce, when it happened, was a huge pain in the ass.
The day my divorce was finalized was the last time I ever saw or spoke to my ex.
The hassle of divorce is both the advantage and disadvantage of marriage. The advantage is that it forces the couple to work through issues that might otherwise cause them to leave. When this works out, the couple can be stronger. But the disadvantage is that the hassle of divorce means the problem has to be really big in order to take that step. This often means couples may just slog through an unhappy relationship for years until the resentment builds up enough to be a big problem all on its own.
Why is it easier? WHY willl a guy I just live with be less likely to act like a bum? Why am I any less obliged to put up with it? Will the process of dividing up our stuff and figuring out who gets what be less complicated? Do you really think the person who walks out after ten years faces less criticism?
The actual paperwork–once you agree on the details–is nothing. It’s like buying a car. If you don’t agree on the details, not having the paperwork doesn’t make it easier.
What makes that split easier? You still have to figure out custody, you still have to figure out how to make two households on a total income that used to support one. You still have the same pressure to stay together.
Do you really think it’s easier to explain to a kid that mom and dad still love each other but don’t want to live together anymore if you aren’t technically married? Do you think it hurts the kid less? Do you really think it’s easier to contemplate moving out and losing half your time with your kid if there was no marriage vow in the first place?
The pressure to stay together for the kids doesn’t have anything to do with the marriage. It’s because it hurts kids when mom and dad separate. Sometimes that still the best option–it hurts **less **than having mom and dad miserable and hating each other. But marriage or no marriage doesn’t change the calculus of “will staying together hurt the kids more that moving out?”.
I think the only way to do that is to avoid forming any sort of pair bond at all. And I want to be part of a family–and I don’t just want to be the kid in a family until my parents die, and then have no nuclear family at all. That means marriage and/or kids, and just kids with no marriage seems complicated and sub-optimal.
That’s fine if you don’t want a family/familial relationship. But it’s not crazy that other people want it.
As always, Manda JO keeps saying the things I would be saying, but she says them better.
But about divorce itself, I used to volunteer at a self-help clinic at a courthouse in Los Angeles. Basically, I helped people fill out divorce paperwork. Most of it was super easy, with the exception of the income, custody, and child support forms.
I also helped people fill out paternity paperwork (this would be for non-married people to establish a parent-child relationship). Most of it was super easy, with the exception of the income, custody, and child support forms.
The information collected for both sets of forms was the same, and the requirement to meet with a counselor (they may have had a different title, I don’t remember) was the same. And also the same was that if the parent agreed, things were incredibly simple, and if they did not agree, things were incredibly difficult.