I'll quote Richard White's answer on Quora to the question "What was the worst thing your parents ever did to you?"
> Every day from as early as I can remember, they were clearly and obviously in love with each other. Even after 50 years of marriage they were still acting like two teenagers going steady. They always supported each other in everything they did or tried to do. They "had each other's backs" at all times.
> I have spent my life trying to find that same kind of relationship - and haven't been able to.
> They unknowingly set the bar too high, I guess.
Like Richard, my parents had an essentially perfect marriage for 18 years until my mother passed away from cancer. They never fought. Ever. They were truly each other's best friend. I guess as a kid I just assumed that all marriages were like that since I didn't grow up knowing otherwise.
My biggest dream in life had always been to have a marriage like theirs. My own marriage just passed the one year mark, and unfortunately it has been a disaster so far. I'm crushed in so many ways, and it's really just taken the spirit out of me. I hope we can fix it (with counseling) but I'm not sure if we can truly ever recover; I have too much resentment over what has been said and done to me at this point.
No marriage is perfect. Every couple fights sometimes, if both people are being real with each other, and if they're not, that's a huge problem in itself. (I think everdev is probably right: they didn't let you see them fighting.)
The goal is not to never fight; it's to always fight fair. Sounds like your parents didn't show you how to do that — which is too bad, if they themselves knew, because most people don't. In any case, you now need to learn how, and any relationship you're in is a great place to start.
If you reach a point where you know you're fighting fair but your spouse isn't, and doesn't seem to care that they're not, that's a reasonable time to give up on the relationship.
Reread everdev's reply too — it's really good. Good luck!
>No marriage is perfect. Every couple fights sometimes, if both people are being real with each other, and if they're not, that's a huge problem in itself.
Buying into this argument that "every couple fight sometimes" is why so many people never eliminate fights from their relationships, because they think it's normal and so never put the effort into bettering themselves and addressing the root causes of problems so that fights don't reoccur. It's much easier to treat fights as inevitable than work on improving one's own self-control, compassion and empathy.
The root cause of fight is that partners disagree over something that is important to both (likely related to some core value). The contributing factor is oftentimes stress, people are not able to be perfect under stress and sleep deprivation.
Self-control and compassion don't make disagreement or bad feelings over important things disappear. They are still present. The "never fight" relationships (not just marriage, but also friendships) are either "we do things as separately as possible" or one of the two ceased to talk about his or her issues. The latter are then "I had not idea partner is unhappy and bam shock divorce" situations.
The easiest way how to keep calm is not to care. It does not have to be screaming match, but if you never disagree about things like child raising, it is likely that one did checked out.
> The "never fight" relationships (not just marriage, but also friendships) are either "we do things as separately as possible" or one of the two ceased to talk about his or her issues.
You missed one more option: "we can discuss a problem without involving emotions or clinging to our opinions too much".
Not clinging on our opinions imply that said opinion is not much important to you. It is easy to make compromise over dinner meal. It is harder to move away from what you consider right in ethical sense or what is important for your self respect. Most couples eventually run into something like that. I don't mean something dramatic here, just personally important.
After all, you are marrying real independent person not a clone.
Also, it is true that when you dont involve emotions in relationship, problem solving is easier. However, that situation describes more work relationship then lifetime partner relationship. We are supposed to be emotionally invested in the whole marriage thing.
> Not clinging on our opinions imply that said opinion is not much important to you.
On the contrary, it's more important to be able to reconsider your strong opinions.
> It is harder to move away from what you consider right in ethical sense
Why marry if your ethics are different?
> what is important for your self respect
Unless it's an abusive relationship, I can't imagine a situation where the self respect can be involved. Usually it's just the ego whining about getting what it wants and disguising it as "self respect".
> We are supposed to be emotionally invested in the whole marriage thing.
There's a wide spectrum of emotions but most of them aren't required in a relationship. As the OP's article says, focus on kindness and appreciation.
> Usually it's just the ego whining about getting what it wants and disguising it as "self respect".
Is this meant to be demostration or rational kind non-emotional solution to dis agreement? Because on the face of it, you simply tried to insult fictional partner. Sure, partner is less likely to argue if you label his demands this way. It won't actually solve the problem however and over time he will figure out what you are doing.
It won't lead to appreciation through, more like resentment and anger.
> There's a wide spectrum of emotions but most of them aren't required in a relationship. As the OP's article says, focus on kindness and appreciation.
You partner will not appreciate if you ignore his negative emotions. Or mock them as above. For one, it is not kind. For the other, he or she will have to look for support elsewhere.
You can have illusion of kindness if you mock partner for not being perfect match to you or if you split first time serious real disagreement happen. Or if you never marry because by the time you know everything about partner to be absolutely certain you two agree about everything including situations you have never been through, you two about to retire.
You can acknowledge the feelings of your partner and yourself without making those feelings the fuel of the argument. In my own experience, acknowledging my partner's feelings makes me immediately calmer, more-grounded, and better able to understand her POV. I imagine it works the same for most people.
If you're with someone you trust, you inherently respect his/her POV. For some, this causes disagreements to boil into violent outrages. They feel an attack on that trust. For others, they take a step back and say, 'This is someone I trust with my life. Either he/she or I am missing something somewhere.'
I'm not insulting a "fictional partner": I mentioned below that I'm in a ten-year-old relationship without fights and that's how I manage my emotions and solve my inner problems that would lead to a fight in our first years together.
The problems you're describing do not arise at all when both partners keep their egos in bay and strive for kindness.
> You missed one more option: "we can discuss a problem without involving emotions...”
How exactly do you have no emotions in a marriage disagreement? Most arguments are about emotions. No one argues about things they aren’t emotional about (unless it’s a proxy argument for something they are emotional about).
Emotions have causes that produce them, so you can ignore emotions and discuss causes. If the cause is something unavoidable like a bad weather, then a partner who's suffering from it needs compassion and support. There's nothing to fight about.
This makes no sense. No one fights about the weather
And you cannot divorce emotions completely from the things that cause them. This is absurd, and akin to saying that someone with a phobia should just rationally analyze it and the problem will go away.
It's the basics of mindfulness: being aware of your emotions and not feeding them by redirecting your attention to something else. If both partners focus on being kind and understanding towards each other, their negative emotions can't get too strong.
>The root cause of fight is that partners disagree over something that is important to both (likely related to some core value).
If both partners disagree about a core value (and no mutually agreeable compromise is possible), the rational thing to do is either separate or for one party to accept the disagreement and move on. Repeatedly arguing about something serves absolutely no purpose, as there's extremely little chance of one party changing the other's mind this way (as is the case for angry arguments in general). As the Einstein quote goes, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again but expecting a different result.
Stress and sleep deprivation indeed make this more difficult, but these are things that can be eliminated, if not easily: case study, people who aren't sleep derived or stressed (everybody's probably met at least one).
>Self-control and compassion don't make disagreement or bad feelings over important things disappear.
Compassion and empathy make it easier to see why other people feel/think about a matter in a particular way, and hence easier to sympathise with their point of view, which in turn reduces bad feelings about it. Self-control helps us not get angry about things we've accepted (if we haven't chosen to separate, and can't convince our partner to accept our view, then we've implicitly accepted them having their view), as we can make our brain see how silly/irrational it is to get angry about something we've agreed to, reducing bad feelings.
> It does not have to be screaming match, but if you never disagree about things like child raising, it is likely that one did checked out.
I agree disagreement is practically unavoidable, but a disagreement need not become a fight. Getting angry is a terrible way to resolve disagreements. People manage to disagree about things they care about at work without getting physically angry, as they know getting angry will probably harm their case.
> I agree disagreement is practically unavoidable, but a disagreement need not become a fight.
To some extent I think we're just using the words differently. What I would say is that a fight doesn't have to get ugly. It's still a fight, though, if one person wants one thing to happen in the relationship, and the other wants something different to happen; it's more than just a factual disagreement — it requires resolution. This may be a matter of one person recognizing that they're being self-centered and backing down, or it may require both people pressing their arguments until a compromise or, better, a creative resolution is found. A fight doesn't require shouting, but it may require saying "I'm angry about this".
Compassion and empathy are critical for fighting well, but they don't eliminate the need to fight, on occasion. Nor do fights have to be about the same things over and over — they do tend to be repetitive, though, when people fight dirty, as nothing is ever really resolved.
Einstein was pretty shitty husband, don't take relationship advice from him. (He was good at physics.)
I have seen enough angry collegues to know that people in fact don't manage to not be angry in work. Plenty of them angry without being abusive or toxic for the record, but clearly pissed and venting or yelling.
Anger is feeling, it is not rational, compassion and listening don't stop it. Self control is about what you do, not what you feel.
Repeated discussions make sense and can bring you two closer over time. Bit by bit. Can make you two learn to live with difference. That quote is not true. I am very glad I did not divorced first time serious difference arose.
I’ve always preferred a more relaxed and methodical approach to “fights,” which makes them more like solution focused discussions, and my most recent ex seemed to expect to scream at each other before we could get to the bottom of the issue. It reminded me of the Monty Python bartering sketch. Why cause hurt if you both want to solve a problem?
I agree with you and I do my best to approach things as communication about a problem, not fighting per se, but a lot of people have life experiences of various sorts that cause them have big feels about various issues and to expect to be crapped on, no matter how they handle it. This means if you are really sincere and decent, you will frequently find yourself paying for past relationships, and not necessarily just romantic ones.
>improving one's own self-control
On the flip-side, this is also just masquerading behind the sentiment "I shouldn't say that".
Feelings will be expressed whether you like it or not, so it's better to say "I'm fucking mad!" about this than to have an argument four hours later about who doesn't put the cap on the toothpaste back on properly.
You make an interesting point. Most people would for example never shout at a coworker, but people consider shouting in an argument with one's spouse fairly routine.
The stakes are lower at work and less (if at all) emotional at least for me. At the end of the day I really don’t care enough about a job to get upset. My job is just a paycheck. It’s purely transactional. My job is disposable. If my job causes me stress over a prolonged period of time, I can easily find another one without any regret. I haven’t invested anything emotionally into my job. My marriage on the other hand is different.
I’m not saying that is an excuse for fighting unfairly or being hurtful. But my wife, my parents, and my (step)sons are the only people I have a deep emotional connection to that I won’t separate myself from awhile if they get on my nerves.
If one is older than thirteen there's no reason to 'fight'. One might disagree with SO but throwing temper tantrums is not an efficient way of communicating and if this is the way of solving every day problems then maybe one's got bigger problem than that. Especially fighting in front of kids is suppose to teach them how to fight in adult life? For kids it's confusing and scary. And who's the winner? One with better argument or the one not crying?
At least one don't. We had fights in the beginning but more than 10 years later there are none. The recipe is staying aware of the ego's childish behavior, so both of you can stop and think instead of trying to have it your way or being afraid to look silly.
Kindness appears to me as the decisive element for a successful relationship.
It’s not the only one of course since there are many other factors that must be handled successfully (managing sexual satisfaction, financial stability, common life goals, ability to raise kids, etc) but kindness to each other is a determinant; it’s the ‘sauce’ that binds everything together and make it hold.
And it must be reciprocated.
If you are in a relationship where there is no way to get that, and counselling isn’t helping enough, the future will most likely be bleak: full of accrued resentment, feelings of being trapped that get worse as time goes by, bitterness and pettiness will rule your life.
People always hope that things will get better and if the relationship is worth it, it’s essential to fight to overcome the struggles, but if there is no foundation of kindness, I’m convinced the only outcome is misery.
We shouldn’t stay with someone out of fear of being alone.
I want to add that kindness should be paired with gratitude. I know that people shouldn't expect anything back from kind acts but sometimes being kind isn't so easy. When someone is grateful for your kindness it makes things it easier. In long relationships showing gratitude is even more important.
No disagreement with your sentiment. To expand on my parent comment, I find once off acts of kindness easy. I can buy you a coffee, heck even two or three. When we get to number 10 maybe 20 I start to have reservations and negative thoughts on where this is all headed. I think relationships start out the similarly. Both sides show their best side. Afterall which woman/man are you going to woo showing how selfish you can be. So we start off on our best behaviour, the honeymoon phase. Then to perpertuate the kindness and consideration we show in the honeymoon phase both sides have to show appreciation and gratitude.
What complicates gratitude in my opinion is our expectation and how we value different acts of kindness. In large parts of Africa women are still expected do the cooking. It is easy for a man to think that task is her duty anyway so no need to be thankful. I think this is where problems start. You are absolutely right, we should be grateful first for the people in our lives.
I'm sorry to hear about the pain you've received in your marriage. Sometimes seeing counselors individually can help if the dynamic between you is too toxic. That way you can unload and process your feelings without causing further pain to each other. Then, once you've reconnected with yourself you can come together in a more constructive and intentional way to repair if you choose to do so.
It's also common for parents to hide their fighting from their kids. Unfortunately, this also hides how they resolve conflict so we have to learn that later in life. Relationships are not about fixing the perfect match that is in alignment with your wants and desires, but about finding someone who will help you grow. It sounds like your partner has introduced you to conflict and conflict resolution which sucks in the moment, but if you can make it through and grow from it will help with your relationship or any future ones you pursue.
Keep in mind your memory of your parents tends to start well into your childhood. You might have been as old as 10 before there's anything in there at all about how your parents behaved towards each other. Certainly 5.
I say this because when kids are small, they stress the hell out out their parents.
And that stress often turns into arguments. Little sleep, and endless menial tasks like cleaning poop does that even to people who never had any issues before. As the kids get older, there's less of the drudgery and the kids end up being more interesting. Less pressure on the relationship, and a huge relief as you slowly realise you've wiped your last poop. As stress recedes, kids are getting older and forming positive memories.
Also remember survivorship bias. If you have a fight and get divorced before you have kids, there won't be any kids around to remember your happy marriage.
This exactly. My wife and I are both on our second marriage and we were in our mid 30s when we got married. She had two sons that she was raising alone. Ironically enough, the relationship with my stepsons was rock solid almost immediately, but the first four years of our marriage, it seems like we were contemplating divorce at least once every six months and would go weeks without speaking to each other. We were both older, set in our ways, and had different outlooks on a lot of things.
But if you look at us now, you would think we are the perfect couple and our marriage is a well oiled machine . It took four years for us to get there.
Our sons saw this first hand and were old enough to know what was going on. But if their earliest memories were us four to seven years into our marriage, out of the financial jams that we were both in when we got married, etc. Thier perspectives on how easy a great marriage is would be completely different.
If I look at my parents marriage growing up, I would have idealized it too. My parents have been married for close to 50 years and together for almost 60 - they were high school sweethearts. By the time I was born, they had already been together for 14 years.
Check out the book “The Course of Love” by Allain de Botton. I don’t think the problem is that the parents were happy! It’s that they were apparently unable to teach the being-happy-in-a-relationship skill to their kids. And it is a skill: more natural for some than others, but possible for everyone to learn and improve on with time and effort.
I don’t believe it is only a skill. If it were, a master could pick a random person on the street and have an amazing marriage with them.
In my opinion, just like a job, there is only so much willpower and motivation you have. It’s a finite resource. A person that you are
1) Sexually attracted to
2) Emotionally connected with
3) Makes you happy by just being themselves
Will make you happy and motivated to work things out, and vice versa.
Saying it’s a skill is like saying working at a frustrating job for decades is a skill. Sure but why not find one you actually are happy to come to every day?
The actual problem in today’s society is how much we expect from what we see is possible, versus how POOR matchmaking is today when you are single!
Matchmaking is overrated, and people expect too much out of relationships. My family is from Bangladesh where the marriages, though typically not arranged per se, involve less of a "trying on clothes" aspect than in the U.S. It's not clear to me that marriages are any happier here. (People are of course more likely to get divorced here, but are likely to end up in a second or third marriage that is not particularly happy either.)
I agree but I am not saying dating is the best way. The main thing for monogamous marriage is the matchmaking. When an entire village is involved, and they give you access to a huge pool of men and women ready to marry each other at the same time, that may be BETTER than the average dating strategy.
Traditional societies have this all over the planet!
Yeah, if it was file search it would be basically swiping left and right on random files until you saw all the files on your hard drive. A brilliant step in matchmaking, to be sure.
Right, I wouldn’t argue that it’s “only” anything! Like any human issue, there are many complex factors, including the fact that some matches are better than others. But I think our culture over-emphasizes finding the perfect match and totally ignores the fact that given any two people, their chances of being happy together can dramatically increase if they spend time and effort learning.
The idea that you need to find the perfect match, be totally yourself all the time and spend no effort making compromises is toxic. You’ll never have those expectations met.
You don’t need the perfect match. However, I would say that the task is exponentially harder the longer you want your marriage to last.
Assuming people don’t really change, if each day you have 2x as many negative possibilities to deal with, that compounds. And similarly if you have 2x as many positive things like a smile vicerally lighting up your world. You want to minimize the former and maximize the latter before you get married!
My cousin has this with her husband. They're likely the best couple I have ever seen. Not a single fight, ever, afaik (from what her sister told me). They're best friends. Two great kids, wealthy and successful, and overall they just have a ton of fun together living and enjoying life.
I have seen some things that suggest causation runs the other way: Good marriages lead to success and wealth. Bad ones lead to other outcomes, including divorce, which can be financially ruinous.
There's always plenty of gossip in the news about rich people with bad marriages, infidelity, repeated divorce and remarriage etc.
Though I imagine serious poverty doesn't generally improve a relationship.
I would say no on the wealth part initially. But I think (being on the road to) success is a major part of what attracted her to him initially.
They were already together for a few years when he almost went under with one of his companies, on the verge of losing millions of euros (and most of his capital at the time), and she helped turn it around by helping out as much as she could.
Wealth however does make it possible to keep your lifestyle "fun" -- they travel frequently to interesting locations (a long trip every 3-4 months, sometimes with and sometimes without the kids)
As far as true love goes, it sure seems like that is what they have.
Not having to worry about money eliminates a lot of sources for conflict. It’s not a big deal if my wife splurges on something that I find pointless, and paying someone to clean means we don’t have to argue about the mess in the kitchen.
Had you never lived together before marriage and maybe hadn't been together very long beforehand? Or did getting married actually change something? Or maybe the marriage was a bandage for an already failing relationship?
I had multiple relationships over the course of my 15 year dating career. Most of them only working for maximum of 2 years. I even moved in with one of them, but it didn't help much. Only when I found out what I wanted, things got better.
The problem had something to do with missing kindness and generosity, but those were just the symptoms.
The reasons were unmet expectations.
The problem with expectations is, you just have them and don't necessarily know how to articulate them. Often you don't even know that you have them.
So you are in a relationship, don't say what you really want, because you don't know it, or feel shame for it etc., and then you start to lose interest in your partner because they don't give you the right thing. Then you become unkind and your partner leaves you.
My wife and I have a company together and work from home, so we pretty much see each other all day every day.
When we first started working together we got in a lot of fights and put our relationship at risk. We realized that we had to figure it out or our relationship would break.
Around the same time this happened, we were incredibly lucky to have attended a free workshop called Founder's Communication (done free by innerspace.org highly highly recommended for anyone in a long term committed relationship, not just founders) which opened up our eyes and helped us improve our communication to the point where we realized that almost without exception, our arguments and fights were triggered by things that had nothing to do with what we were arguing about.
We discovered that "99%" of the time, the cause of our fights were that we were hungry, sleepy, in pain, or worse, a combination of any of those. Then we first started getting in the habit of trying to pause fights as early as possible and ask each other/ourselves if we were hungry, sleepy or in pain, then if either of us was, we would try to address the issue first (get some rest, food or comfort). Then we realized, why not prevent these things altogether? We could easily plan to avoid hunger and sleepiness, pain is harder but also a lot more unusual.
Now we are so aware of this stuff that we hardly ever fight, and whenever we end up saying something bad/mean in the heat of the moment, we are able to understand that we didn't really mean it, forgive ourselves quickly and move on.
As a side note, this is really just an application of the realization researchers have made, that verbal communication only conveys a small fraction of what we are trying to say, the rest is all body language. Watch out about thinking too much of the meaning of what anyone has said to you. Highly recommend reading the book The Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox.
This is very good advice and it also goes for children as well. If you want to prevent most of the fussiness of kids, make sure they stay hydrated and give them a healthy snack every couple of hours. If they are of napping age, be consistent with naps. It's not a cure-all for tantrums, but it certainly minimizes them.
This. Just had my first kid. It helps immensely to anticipate when they'll be cranky and be ready to address it right away (by feeding them, soothing them or helping them fall asleep).
You also need to be aware of how that overlaps with you being hungry/sleepy and try to address it in the best way. It's so easy to get angry at your kids just because they got cranky at an inconvenient time for you.
At the same time, at this stage of their lives, I believe kids should experience some stress/frustration/pain to know how it feels and learn how to deal with it. Very important life skill.
You're lucky if your fights are only about petty things like these. There are much tougher problems that don't go away, like finance, health issues or children.
The key is being able to talk about those issues (finance, health, children, etc), and resolve them, without having to get into a fight.
Fighting doesn't help, it only aggravates the situation and deteriorates relationships over time. Try to avoid it whenever possible. The techniques on my previous comment are just one way for doing that, there are others as well.
Isn't this the most natural feeling in all animals. It is ok to be hungry, most people all over the world don't think of hunger as a feeling to be avoided at all costs.
Yes, it is a natural feeling and it is ok to be hungry, just be aware that when you are hungry you behave differently than when you are not, and it might actually play against you (have you seen the Snickers commercial? It's spot on).
It can also be used in your favor, for example there was some research about the severity of sentences relative to the time of day. What they found out is that judges are more lenient (give out lesser sentences) at the beginning of the day (right after breakfast) and right after lunch - the opposite was true as well, the harshest sentences were given right before lunch and by the end of the day.
Several startup teams have said to have used this when scheduling their YC interviews. It would be amazing if the YC teams could share acceptance rates based on this info.
But I was concerned that eliminating a natural feeling will also eliminate benefits associated with both for mind and body.
I grew up poor in third world country and eating constantly was not a thing and being hungry was as natural as being sweaty. In rich countries you never get practice dealing with hunger, you never get a chance to make peace with in recognize it as a valid feeling. People never leave house without a snack in their bag.
"What they found out is that judges are more lenient (give out lesser sentences) at the beginning of the day (right after breakfast) and right after lunch - the opposite was true as well, the harshest sentences were given right before lunch and by the end of the day."
If that's true, and I can imagine it may hold some weight, it is a depressing reality we live in.
Ok... I'll bite. This feel good article doesn't do justice to relationship issues at all. A lot of relationship issues simply arise from compromises that have been done in past. May be woman is desperate in finding husband and man is realizing he is getting out of options. Both gets married despite knowing incompatibilities here and there. People tell them "opposite attracts". Ummm... no. There is of course honeymoon period and then eventually kids enter in life. Suddenly woman doesn't feel need to make man happy as much and man is realizing his role being transformed to essentially a bank account. Things start falling apart and there is no right thing to fix this. Sure, kindness/generosity etc helps on both sides but the fundamental root cause is folks ending up together due to short term biological reproduction needs that then invariably gets extended as kids enter in their lives. It's not a coincidence that lot of marriages fall apart when kids are between 8 to 12 years old. That's the time kids are becoming independent, women gets more time to do job and run household according to her desires all the while man starts to understand that there is very little left for them to be in. Some better educated couples would hold off until kids go to college and there is spike in divorce rate when kids graduate from high school.
All true and don't forget the sex with other people that everyone secretly wants at all times. Women are ready to "trade up" for another man, men just want to mate with other women. Couples who have only slept with each other don't seem to suffer from this. Couples where one or both had a lot of sex before getting together will suffer and will usually end having affairs.
Evidence? Sure, I know many couples. The bit about differences between couples who have only slept with each other is my own theory based on my observations. But it seems this has been studied more rigorously, for example: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1741-3737... But this talks about marital dissolution, not simply affairs. Affairs are happening way more than you think.
Except that the study cited didn't take into account confounding factors (cohabitation in earlier decades was associated more strongly with lower socioeconomic status, for example). The study has since been replicated with more recent data, and shows a weakening correlation: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3000053/
Well, they are still both talking about marriage dissolution. While dissolution surely implies an unhappy marriage, the reverse implication is most certainly not true. Many marriages stay official for reasons other than "love and happiness". Most affairs probably don't even come to light, let alone actually lead to marriage dissolution.
Because it is still evidence for what I claimed and the best I could find. I couldn't find anything showing for or against what I claimed. I think that's because it would be really hard to get good data.
If were happy with anecdata my evidence is the exact opposite. The people who've had few partners get curious and are the ones who end up having affairs, the ones who had dozens and dozens keep on the straight and narrow.
But of course that's just people for whom I have the data, very small sample.
There's a big difference between one and "few". There's also a very long tail of partner counts and if you're talking about people who have had dozens of partners those are outliers. The median is somewhere around 5-7 in a lifetime.
I think that issue there is not solving problem when man is turning into bank account and women is turning into child care provider with relationship between them not being treated as important. It sounds like at that moment, each cares about own unhappiness but does not think much about other.
They are not kind and understanding at each other at that time. They are settling into roles without talking about whether they like roles and without talking about how to change their roles so that they are happier.
Somewhat raw but at the end of the day I'd say mostly true.
I'll add my own conjecture: the root problem is that this hypothetical couple you describe (who is more common than many would like to admit) are both settling.
They are settling because they didn't take marriage seriously earlier in their lives. They didn't take marriage seriously because society stopped forcing them to do so. And nature also didn't force them to either, thanks to birth control.
These aren't individuals at fault here - these are systemic incentives warping previously traditional behavior.
So then this couple got into their 30s, which isn't young, as the decades are not created equal. And they realized - oh shit, better actually try figuring out how to have a family, lest we live alone and with limited meaning for the latter 40 years of life. Seriously - what are people thinking that they'll be happy being single into their 40s and beyond?
Here's a sad truth: most people will get a decent, but not super meaningful job. There can only be so many entrepreneurs and rockstars. So from ages 35 onwards, you better be set up to have a family and create something that will provide you meaning for Act II of life, because it's quite long.
Do you imply that the only way of having a meaningful life when your job is mediocre is by creating a family? What about other recreational activities or hobbies? Somewhat anecdotally, I recall a grade school teacher that was single in her 50s but remained active within a large volunteer community supporting youth. She often discussed how her participation in this circle gave her life purpose.
Maybe the systemic issue is that people who are reaching their 30s often feel pressured by their social group to get married and thus believe their lives are meaningless without that ring or child validating its purpose.
If I divide my adult life up into my relationships, my observations....
Phase 1 - 20s. Graduated from college, moved from my small city to a larger metro area, went through some physical issues while at the same time trying to establish my career. It was a lonely time. I had one or two female friends who I would hang out with occasionally but they were both in the “friend zone” (one by mutual choice and one no shared attraction).
Phase 2: late 20s, early 30s. Got married just because I was lonely and all of the warning signs were there before we got married. It was an equally lonely marriage, with no love and I started spending a lot of time pursuing working side hobbies to ignore the problem.
Phase 3: early to mid 30s. Divorced. I had a more active social life, lots of friends, fun hobbies, no serious relationships. It was better and more fulfilling than the first time around but still there was something missing coming to a big house in the evening and being alone.
Phase 4a - mid 30s to 40. Started dating my now wife. Our marriage was really on the rocks. We were both older, set in our ways and dealing with the financial repercussions of our former marriages and in my case, my failed real estate side business. It wasn’t lonely but it was unstable.
Phase 4b. We both worked out our former issues and as we got through our previous financial issues things are a lot less stressful. We have what I consider a pretty good marriage.
I don’t care what anyone says. Having money solves a lot of issues. There are a lot more “ands” than “ors” - we don’t have to argue about doing this or that - we can do both.
It’s scary, but I can’t imagine having a fulfilling life without being able to come home and having someone to share my life, my victories, my defeats, and just share life with.
"I don’t care what anyone says. Having money solves a lot of issues. There are a lot more “ands” than “ors” - we don’t have to argue about doing this or that - we can do both."
Yes but the essence of a relationship is how problems get solved. You are avoiding the problems! That's cheating, but if you got the cash, all power to you!, just hope you guys don't disagree at some point, because cash doesn't solve EVERYTHING :)
I was both trying to dig my way out of the disaster of what was my real estate side business and trying to get my career back on track. I had a five year plan to do it. My wife and I discussed this before we got married. But talking through it in practice and living through it, is entirely different. I never gave her any reason not to trust me, but I didn’t “have a resume.” She trusted me intellectually but not emotionally while we were going through.
5 years, 4 jobs, $45K more in salary and a nice house in the burbs later. I’ve built a resume. This time around with 5 years under our belt, she has a lot more confidence in my leadership (for lack of a better word).
She’s very much a life love. But a marriage is an investment. You invest your heart, your financial well being and if it goes bust, the other gets half. Marriage is a risky investment. We are both much better off in every way - including financially than we would be separately. Married couples statistically build wealth faster than single people. As an example, my wife working a stable government job with good benefits has allowed me to aggressively change jobs and chase after risky opportunities.
When you are in your mid 30s and you are your second marriage (we both are) no matter how positive you are, you can’t help but to be a little more jaded starting out and you both have a lot to prove. It took a lot more of a leap of faith on her part to believe all of the things I was telling her and a lot more faith on my side that she would be thier through thick and thin.
When you are in your thirties getting married, there is a lot more practicality and lot less looking through rose colored glasses.it took us both almost a decade to recover from our previous divorce. Neither one of us were willing to risk that happening again. We prioritize our marriage before anything else.
Pretty sure I recently read that money is one of the main causes of relationship problems. If you can remove those problems it makes sense that you are more likely to have a better relationship.
> Do you imply that the only way of having a meaningful life when your job is mediocre is by creating a family? What about other recreational activities or hobbies? Somewhat anecdotally, I recall a grade school teacher that was single in her 50s but remained active within a large volunteer community supporting youth. She often discussed how her participation in this circle gave her life purpose.
Yes, for the vast majority of people. There may be exceptions. There may also be a lot of coping behavior necessary to live without what you could have had.
> Maybe the systemic issue is that people who are reaching their 30s often feel pressured by their social group to get married and thus believe their lives are meaningless without that ring or child validating its purpose.
There is less pressure than ever, given the "freedom" and "free love" everyone is expected to have in their teens and 20s. The pressure in the 30s is that real-life realism coming to crash down. And again, I would argue this is even less as there are less marriages and less childbirths to citizens in the developed worlds (to which my comments apply), so therefore even less relative pressure than in the past.
Why is it so unpopular to say that life exists to prolong life? Ie have kids. I'm sorry, but me and you don't matter. And any believe that we do is to satisfy our egos only. Its our kids that matter. And with this mentality humanity will prevail. If we loose sight of this humanity will eventually not. In my opinion. And yes, our kids should have the same mentality. And that is called the folly of life.
I do believe it is our purpose to reproduce and extend the lives of future generations, but it is foolish to believe that humanity can prosper by systemically encouraging everyone to raise children. Some individuals are simply predisposed to be bad caretakers given various environmental and genetic factors. Must we actively inspire people who do not have the ability, patience, or the mental capacity to raise children to do just that?
Aside from that, what is it from that we must be "prevail", exactly? If you are suggesting the continuation of our species, I might remind you that our global population is steadily increasing.
Of course life only exists to perpetuate itself. We are just vessels for our genetic code.
That doesn't mean I have to participate if I'd rather live my life in a different way. I have no desire to be a parent, or to produce children to satisfy a biological imperative.
We are all too busy trying to accumulate wealth like good citizens, to bother with something as airy-fairy as true happiness. Money = happiness. OK!? :)
Interesting, in the fact that small acts could define a relationship. Less interesting from a global perspective of a relationship.
I don't think (but I may be wrong) that a lot of people take fights at random (the med school example looks very dumb, to me) unless there's a underlying cause.
And, learning to give _and accept_ criticism is as important as well. It's very easy IMHO to be positive when everything is fine, the sun shining, and you've got plenty of free time for yourself and your partner.
What if life/job/kids make you feel "squeezed" and you can't totally and always fulfill somebody's emotional requirements? The art of compromise, alas, is the hard part of a relationship.
I was reminded of the hackernews ethos to assume the best of commenters when engaging them as per the active constructive corner of the relationship action/reaction thing in the article.
All relationships boil down to two life-forms trying to pull one another over the counter to archive goals that are detrimental to the short term interests of both individuals. For that to work, both sides got to have mental bugs, exploits and hooks.
Have fun on your next date, finding out what emotional responses are part of the long term bonding, why they are important and how they act directly/ indirectly against your interests.
I would postulate that is the definition if immaturity, or at least short-sightedness. Sooner or later people start looking for ways that both can win, in the short term and in the long term. Sometimes that means giving up something you want now for something you want even more later. It takes time to see that though, which is why it’s rare to see in very young people. (I don’t know you personally, so this isn’t directed at you, just a counter argument).
Why did they pick 6 years as the measurement for a successful relationship? Given a perfectly justified skepticism of social science studies, that number seems very much like sample retrofitting. Beyond that, even their hypothesis is absurd as it implies that the way a person interacts is a causal factor for a relationship, yet the way people interact with their partner is quite obviously caused by how they get along! It's like saying people who enjoy going to the beach are often tanned, and implying that if you're not tanned that is a causal relationship with you not going to the beach. It's really bizarre logic.
But first one must be able to connect with people... since I can’t do that, the rest is considered behaviors of an pointless, unrespectable, unworthy fool, while everyone else is mostly “take, take, take.”
This article relies heavily on findings by the Gottman Institute however the Gottman Institute's findings are suspect because they built their prediction models after the results are known and they never verified that their models hold up w/ additional data.
In machine learning parlance, it's equivalent to deriving a formula using training data and not checking if the formula is accurate w/ a validation data. I doubt many (anyone?) here would trust an autonomous car built w/ only training data and never tested w/ validation data. Similarly, I don't believe/trust the Gottman's prediction rate (94%) for a second.
Or maybe kindness and generosity is the result of other things going well. If both are completely satisfied with each other and their personalities match, it's plausible that they will treat each other well.
Perhaps the comment was referencing a myriad of different factors which might affect relationships now that didn't exist in 2014? According to the World Happiness Report 2017, there is a trend which suggests Americans are growing less happy each year. So maybe in the interim of 4 years the world has become drastically less optimistic about intimate relationships... Or not.
If we are leveling our critical analysis and skepticism to the extreme I would say that all these studies are never settled and the World Happiness Report does not invalidate findings of the other study.
> there is a trend which suggests Americans are growing less happy each year. So maybe in the interim of 4 years the world.
So are you saying that Amricans = World? Please (for example) go to Spain and look about how happiness works differently than America.
Ah, I was not intending for my response to be taken literally, sorry. I was merely trying to show how ridiculous his claim was since there was no rational argument for it.
I'll have to work on my presentation skills next time.
> Every day from as early as I can remember, they were clearly and obviously in love with each other. Even after 50 years of marriage they were still acting like two teenagers going steady. They always supported each other in everything they did or tried to do. They "had each other's backs" at all times.
> I have spent my life trying to find that same kind of relationship - and haven't been able to.
> They unknowingly set the bar too high, I guess.
Like Richard, my parents had an essentially perfect marriage for 18 years until my mother passed away from cancer. They never fought. Ever. They were truly each other's best friend. I guess as a kid I just assumed that all marriages were like that since I didn't grow up knowing otherwise.
My biggest dream in life had always been to have a marriage like theirs. My own marriage just passed the one year mark, and unfortunately it has been a disaster so far. I'm crushed in so many ways, and it's really just taken the spirit out of me. I hope we can fix it (with counseling) but I'm not sure if we can truly ever recover; I have too much resentment over what has been said and done to me at this point.