Poll of the Day > Why don't you have a wife PotD?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Zeus posted...

Because you can get most of the same perks while dating without risking over half of your belongings and a chunk of your future income in a divorce? Or because I have yet to meet the right wealthy heiress where I wouldn't have to worry about losing my shit in a divorce?

Why buy the cow when you can fuck it for free?



Zeus posted...

Yeah, it's nice in theory, but never seems to work in practice. Even my hippy friends wound up getting an expensive engagement ring and had large ceremony (although it was at a cheaper venue). The *only* people I know who actually had a cheap wedding was a couple who eloped and didn't tell anybody that they were married for like 5 years which was done partly because one needed to get on the other's medical plan and supposedly they hadn't told their family or anybody else because they had wanted to do a proper wedding eventually.

I know an older couple who finally got married after dating for decades that didn't put any money into expensive rings or any ceremony (they got married in front of a Justice of the Peace with a couple witnesses and coffee/cake afterwards), but yeah, like I said, it's usually a hard sell because every facet of our culture basically programs women almost from birth that they need to have a ridiculous wedding ring and a massive wedding ceremony in order to validate their relationship. And that's hard to shake off, even for women who mostly avoid taking marriage all that seriously.

In a similar vein, it's VERY difficult to actually pull-off asking for a pre-nup prior to a marriage, because women will tend to see it as a vote of no confidence in advance and let it poison their perception of the relationship. Because our culture tends to treat it that way.

We have a very toxic sort of mindset when it comes to marriage, relationships, and love in general though. A large part of why we have a 50% divorce rate is because so many people go into marriage with incredibly unrealistic expectations or assumptions, and aren't willing to make sacrifices or compromises because they've been taught by years worth of movies and books that "true love conquers all" and that "there's one perfect soulmate out there for everyone". Or because people are so desperate to validate themselves via marriage or children that they're willing to settle for the first good option that comes along, and then balk once things aren't the magical dream they'd been promised.


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The 50% divorce rate is a pervasive myth that was never true.

My husband and I definitely went the cheap way both because we didn't care and couldn't afford otherwise. We bought each other cheap rings, paid a filing fee for the legal marriage, listened to a dude's speech about marriage at the court house before signing everything, and went to lunch at Jack in the Box. Where I proceeded to get him blamed for something he didn't do, heh heh.

When it comes to soulmates I definitely think people are crazy. You can never meet someone who is perfect and soul bonded to you right away. You can only find compatible people and then develop into true mates over time.
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Cause I have sex with a man.
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Marriage is great.
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Zangulus posted...

Friggen millennials ruining the divorce lawyer business.

LMAO

Moonjay posted...

The 50% divorce rate is a pervasive myth that was never true.

It's not a myth, it's just often misinterpreted.

A lot of people assume that 50% divorce rate means that every marriage is basically a coin-flip. Which isn't strictly the case. The overall average is pulled up dramatically by people who get remarried after an initial divorce, at which point the specific odds of failure jump up to something closer to 80% (with the logic essentially being that someone who fucked up once isn't going to change, and will fuck up again and again).

Every time you hear a story about someone who has half a dozen ex-wives (or if you KNOW that person), keep in mind that their failures are counterbalancing out half a dozen successful marriages where people stayed together for decades.

So no, marriage isn't quite akin to going to Vegas and betting everything on black in roulette, but people who go into marriages with fucked-up expectations and never change them are going to keep repeatedly failing, because they don't understand the real reasons why it never works out for them, and thus never change their behavior.



Zangulus posted...

Not to mention divorce rates are going way down over the last 10 years.

Indeed. Because, as you point out, a lot of people are finally breaking the "EVERYONE HAS TO GET MARRIED AND HAVE 2.5 KIDS OR YOU ARE A FAILURE AS A HUMAN BEING" mindset, as well as the "NO SEX BEFORE MARRIAGE" mindset. The more people who put marriage off entirely, or who get married much later (after figuring things out a bit more), the more it skews the marriage data back the other way.

People who get married because they feel like they're SUPPOSED to be married, or because they're afraid of "dying alone", or because they don't want to make God sad by having sex outside of marriage aren't necessarily going to make well-considered partner choices.


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People with multiple ex spouses can be pretty funny. Either totally cagey about it or their exes are all the devil. :P
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