Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person
nytimes.comI think that there are two extremely harmful narratives that have reached wide acceptance in the last few generations:
1) There's a soulmate out there for you
2) You shouldn't change who you are for your partner
Both of which combine to create the barrage of unhappy relationship stories that you hear today. Really, I think that you can be happy with just about anyone who is willing to listen to you and change their mind when they're wrong.
Because you are wrong about something. Maybe it's major, maybe it's minor, maybe it's a "facet of your personality" which is destructive, and you should be willing to update the way that you interact with the world based on new information. Going into relationships as an immutable person is a quick way to dwindle your dating pool down to practically nothing or decrease the quality of the relationship for your partner.
PROTIP:
1. Have a longterm vision/goal for your life that is achievable regardless of financial resources/location etc.
2. Find a partner in crime who shares that vision and is willing to join you on what will surely be a great adventure known as your life. Life will surely be no bed of roses.
3. Stress Test your relationship in some way to ensure the vision/goal is aligned.
I decided I should marry my wife following 6 months of hard travel through South America. I figured if we passed that test, we could handle pretty much anything.
EDIT: Appreciate all the comments. I have actually been married now for 10 years and have 3 kids. So while its true that the "Test" I am describing cannot mimic the tough slog of real-life, how exactly do you propose to mimic the difficulty of raising kids? If I were to speak to my 20 something self I would still recommend a difficult trip is an easy way to see how easily your relationship will come apart under stress, mainly because you are coming up against unknown/uncomfortable situations and factors.
There're random factors you can't control. Good example is post-partum depression. Every child birth is 20% chance; once happening, it can significantly change both partners.
So don't have kids, we're not running out of people after all.
Not sure why you're downvoted. I suppose you're not contributing too much to the conversation, and it seems a little sarcastic (or something), but i often feel not having kids is a forgotten option. My SO and I chose long ago not to have kids (independently, fwiw), and people often look at us like we have two heads (.. each, heh).
It's not at all a forgotten option, it's just not one that the majority choose to take. There's nothing wrong with deciding to have kids. We're not running out of people, but we're not over-crowded and population growth is slowing in many places. There are certain geographic areas with more dire situations, but the whole isn't looking bad.
As far as their comment in particular:
> So don't have kids, we're not running out of people after all.
This adds zero to the conversation. It's like saying "You might get hit by a bus if you try to cross the street, so don't do it at all".
In truth, deciding whether to have kids is a much more complicated process than that. There's no "So just do X" or "So don't do X" advice that is helpful or constructive.
I'm sorry that my comment didn't meet your standards of excellence, but in fact a few billion less people would certainly make it possible to raise the standard of living for the rest. Given that a few billion people live in squalor now, it seems like overage, don't you think?
People don't like to question the basic assumptions they live with, such as, "Having children is a necessary part of a good and fulfilled life."
I didn't downvote, but if I had, it wouldn't be for that reason. It would be because having kids or not having kids is something many people speak of cavalierly as if it is totally in our control and this is often not true. If birth control fails, there are places where abortion is hard to come by (including large parts of the U.S., from what I gather). These attitudes disproportionately negatively impact women.
Much of human sexual morality is rooted in the thorny issue that mother nature makes sex pleasurable in large part to get you to reproduce and efforts to enjoy sex without it leading to babies are often unsuccessful. So, we have a long human tradition of things like shotgun weddings.
If every comment you come across accounts for the full spectrum of human and geopolitical variability, they would stop being comments and start being novellas.
It is possible to leave comments that are not novellas and that also are not sweepingly dismissive of underlying reality. All birth control methods have failure rates. None of them promises 100% protection -- except celibacy (assuming no one gets raped), which most married couples are not keen to practice.
I'm curious, if we take the failure rate of responsible protected sex, post-vasectomy sex, etc, for the planet...
... does that even start to contribute to replacing the existing population, or is it a statistical blip? Is this just a dead end you're trying to lead me down?
No, people don't like solutions which ignore the problem.
Yes, by completely changing your plan for your life you can prevent certain problems, but that doesn't necessitate that you should make the change.
It doesn't, but it suggests that people should consider it far more than they do. Given how often marriages end as a direct or indirect result of children, you'd think it would come up more.
Not having kids is an extremely common option that's growing in popularity. It's also incompatible with the modern welfare state as currently structured.
> Not having kids is an extremely common option that's growing in popularity. It's also incompatible with the modern welfare state as currently structured.
I've wondered whether we might be seeing a new division of labor emerging: An increasing number of educated professionals elect to have few or none of the kids needed for the next generation of workers, while some lower-income people take up the slack by having lots of kids. This might actually be a sustainable social model, but it would require two things: (1) "Talent," however you choose to define that, needs to appear in sufficient numbers of children born to low-income parents and not just in children born to educated professionals --- my guess is that this is indeed the case; (2) crucially, society must be able to provide the infrastructure needed to raise children to productive citizenship, especially when some of these children are being raised by parents who don't personally have access to the necessary financial- and other resources --- and that's very much only a partially-solved problem.
That's less "new", and more a re-emergence of feudal dynamics in child-rearing that probably never left as much as we'd like to pretend.
It's also the ending of Idiocracy (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/) :P
Or adopt already born ones that don't have much of a chance otherwise.
The myth of unadopted babies/kids is pervasive and pretty inaccurate. Most babies and small children who are up for adoption have multiple families vying to bring them home already...
If you want to talk about adopting preteens/teens/special needs children then it's a different ball game, but that's not what people try to do.
Yes, I wasn't implying an age limit on adoption. However, I think there's almost always some amount of self-interest in having kids:
Me and my girlfriend despise babies (for now) and simply don't see ourselves as being responsible/mature enough to raise kids yet. We do entertain the idea though, now and then, and for us the main attractions of having kids seem to be: Something we made together, a "substitute" of each other to live for after one of us dies, and something to carry on our legacy, such as it is.
With adoption, these things can be fulfilled if the child is young enough, to be molded into our image, as it were.
That's not to say that love for an orphan, no matter how old, cannot happen. Of course there can be selfless adoptions, where you just want to make someone's life better without regard to yourselves.
I hope there is some self-interest in having kids! One thing that I hope to impart on my child is that martyrdom is a terrible go-to practice.
The goal I have with raising my child isn't to create a miniature version of myself, it's to raise an autonomous individual with a robust moral framework. As far as self-interest goes, sharing this experience with my partner is one of the things I look forward to most over the next few years.
That is still your legacy; if you succeed he or her will have grown up to be an autonomous individual with a robust moral framework, because of you. He/she will still be what you wanted him/her to be.
But what if the child's own will decides to become an evil overlord instead?
Depending on your race.
https://ourworldindata.org/future-world-population-growth/#w...
Much of the developed world is indeed running out of people though.
such a valid choice! We should have irreversible sterilization ceremonies for couples that want to decide at age 30 they wish to remain married without kids for the rest of their lives. The trouble with the choice now without sterilization is the option to have kids is always there and available. i.e. if u have a kid the domino falls in one direction. But if you choose not to have a kid the domino never falls. People will say "irreversible sterilization" sounds so permanment! But so is your first kid.
why all the down votes? This would be optional! Just like a couple decides to have kids, they can decide to do this.
Honestly, i feel like there is a lot of sarcastic tones in these threads... so pardon my ignorance if i miss any obvious wit.
With that said, i've always liked the idea of reversible sterilization as a standard. It is of course a worrisome proposition to suggest we forcefully sterilize people.. which i'm not exactly saying. I'm simply saying, what an interesting world would it be if reproduction was never by accident, and always intended.
I figured if we passed that test, we could handle pretty much anything.
A relationship isn't hard when you are on an adventure and experiencing new things and facing new challenges. Relationships become hard when you have spent a few years in a daily rut of kids, work, house work, bills repeat repeat repeat.
To be fair, both scenarios are known to stress them. I have known many couples who met, were fine for months, and then went on a trip together and broke up. Traveling with someone can be very stressful.
no.
you tested with a lot of externalities keeping life exciting.
the real stress is being together through the daily, normal grind. in particular kids. where traveling for 6months through SA becomes unattainable - but you still remember those good old days.
the 7 year itch is very real and closely tracks having kids.
what you describe is the 20something vision of life. changes drastically mid-30s for most.
Handle six months of adventure together?
Try eight years of monotony. I guess if you have the monetary means and nothing to tie you down to a monotonous lifestyle, this will be avoided. But for the standard 2 kids 9-5, good luck.
Not saying it isn't a stress test, but it just isn't the same. And the unfortunate truth is there is no test other than actually doing it.
Counter tips:
> 1. Have a longterm vision/goal for your life that is achievable regardless of financial resources/location etc.
1. Plan for financial long term future but focus on the fun in the short term. Also, good fun is a cheap fun so it's not mutually exclusive with the previous sentence.
> 2. Find a partner in crime who shares that vision and is willing to join you on what will surely be a great adventure known as your life. Life will surely be no bed of roses.
2. Don't try to find anybody. Choose science! [1]
> 3. Stress Test your relationship in some way to ensure the vision/goal is aligned.
3. Life has enough natural stresses that time alone is a decent enough indicator.
> 2. Don't try to find anybody. Choose science! [1]
"Sience! I'll kill you!" (Ahmed Scientist)
handle pretty much anything for six months
Check back in six years, then fifteen, then twenty
See edit.
> 1. Have a longterm vision/goal for your life that is achievable regardless of financial resources/location etc.
What's yours?
Good plan. I find the same thing goes for friendships too. The more things friends have endured together, the more likely they are to stick together in the long run.
What matters in the marriage of feeling is that two people are drawn to each other by an overwhelming instinct and know in their hearts that it is right.
That is not enough. If you don't have the practical logistics down as well, the odds will be very much against you. Trust is a big factor. Everything is harder when resources are constrained, especially trust.
Note: That point in the article isn't stating the author's views. It's stating a somewhat modern trend in marriage. Marriage by feeling, not by reason (the author's description of two modes of deciding whom to marry).
The author even goes on to say why there are problems with this mode and suggests a different one, one based on pessimism.
What you quoted is not the author's point at all. He goes on to say it's an overreaction to the previous belief in "logic" marriages.
A comedian once said "Find someone you can tolerate and marry them." The point being that we as society have put marriage expectations so high that they are impossible for most people to meet. True love, the one, etc... are all things that sound great, but just rarely, if ever happen. It will not always be rainbows and butterflies and there will be times where it is a lot of work. Knowing that going in will lead to an attitude of working together.
It is actually true. When you pick someone, what you are really doing is picking a set of problems that you want to live with, not a set of happiness that you want to live with it.
Happiness comes and goes. Problems and being able to deal with them always stay.
There's a line in a song: It's not alway's rainbows and butterflies; it's compromising that moves us along.
Maroon5. I probably subconsciously used part of that line in my comment.
> The good news is that it doesn’t matter if we find we have married the wrong person.
Yes, it does! OMG, this so laughably wrong. (The whole article.)
Who you marry is a big, big determiner of happiness.
It's better to be single than to marry the wrong person.
That line is speaking at a different level than your response.
The point - which the article goes on to elaborate on in the next few paragraphs - is that happiness is a choice, not a consequence. Every person is going to have flaws, and they will have little quirks that drive you nuts. Whether the relationship succeeds or not depends on how you react to those flaws. Do disagreements spiral out of control, with each person getting angrier and taking it out on their partner, making them angrier in turn? Or do they melt away with a decision to compromise and accept reality?
The article's point is that you should own your emotions instead of letting them own you. The example they start with is two people who do whatever their emotions tell them to without thought of the consequences. The example they end with is two people who understand their emotions but also understand that they don't have to react to their first impulse.
I more or less agree with the parent. The article poses a pessimistic approach to mariage as a sane approach, but I find it utterly depressing to consider a whole life married to someone you have to make constant painful efforts to live with.
Of course you can, but from the outside you'll be miserable. You are master of your emotions, and can still make do with the situation. But you could have married someone you are more compatible with and only need slight efforts every here and there.
Everyone has flaws and in any couple there is a need to make adjustments, but the size of these adjustments will still wildly vary wether you take care to choose someone that fits you or not.
Saying "nobody's perfect so why care ?" is a thing nobody in their sane mind would take seriously.
Of course "right person" doesn't mean "flawless person"!
That is a complete strawman.
> you should own your emotions instead of letting them own you.
Those who let their emotions own them are the ones who tend settle for the wrong person. "Sure he drinks, spends money like crazy and flirts with every beautiful woman he sees ... but I LOVE him".
I think, then, that you and the article are talking past each other. There's nothing in the article that says one should settle for he who "drinks, spends money like crazy, and flirts with every beautiful woman he sees". The examples given are "The failure of one particular partner to save us from our grief and melancholy is not an argument against that person" and "The person who is best suited to us is not the person who shares our every taste (he or she doesn’t exist), but the person who can negotiate differences in taste intelligently", neither of which I see as particularly big sins.
Indeed, I'm a bit baffled by the commenters (in this subthread and elsewhere) that are interpreting the article's main point as "have no standards". It is not contradictory to have high standards and also realize that no partner is going to complete us or make us happy all the time. It just means realizing that momentary unhappiness is a part of life, and that it's worth forgiving the little things if the big things are in place.
> The point - which the article goes on to elaborate on in the next few paragraphs - is that happiness is a choice, not a consequence.
This was also the conclusion of a pretty interesting book I recently read - The Geography of Bliss.
> It's better to be single than to marry the wrong person
For some people. The path you like is not necessarily optimal for me.
Many marriages survive on companionship and familiarity.
My great grandparents were married for almost 90 years (Indian arranged kid marriage) and they were both centenarians. They seemed happy enough (but how could I tell as a kid). Maybe some of the things they lived through (e.g. two wars) seemed like bigger deals than the (inevitable) conflicts in their marriage?
I think what the author was trying to say is that every person is the wrong person to marry if you judge them by your expectations of what they should bring to the relationship.
I think interpersonal relationships is one of the places where it matters most to have expectations and standards. There will be trade-offs, but at the end of the day you need to be able to add to someone's life and vice versa. This whole low/no expectations thing can keep people in some pretty toxic situations. And if you have expectations, you also need to be able to extend yourself to meet the expectations of others. Its give and take.
This whole low/no expectations thing can keep people in some pretty toxic situations.
It's not really about low/no expectations. It's about not letting smaller, less important things impact the larger, more important things. So, one person sometimes not putting down the toilet seat could either be a momentary frustration that is sometimes mentioned but largely ignored, or used instead as a catalyst for arguments and an example of how that person is lazy and uncaring.
Agreed!
This was the expectation that the author believes makes everyone the wrong person to marry: that a perfect being exists who can meet all our needs and satisfy our every yearning
Even if that is true, we can somehow rank the wrongs on a scale and go with the least wrong.
> It's better to be single than to marry the wrong person.
Or date them. Or live with them.
I was really hoping for at least some statistics or research to show what the scale of the purported issue is, and the decision-making processes that lead to it. This reads more as an opinion piece from a marriage counselor (author seems to be a television personality in actuality) than an actual explanation of why people choose the wrong marriage partner.
But at the same time I feel like this is an accurate summation of the problem and contains solid advice.
This was a good read.
I think getting good data on this would be impossible. Unfortunately it would involve including peoples' opinions and perceptions on events and we're amazing animals at misunderstandings and self-deceptions. Who knows if the purported reason actually has anything to do with it and isn't just the answer someone is comfortable with telling themselves or others?
Agree, this is the wisdom I wish someone drilled into me when I was young and lusty. We got indoctrinated early into romanticism by every song and Disney cartoon. It's myopic. Ain't no r&b ballads about marriage doldrums.
I don't know. I pretty much agree with the author on all points after my bad experiences (luckily without being in a marriage)... ...but I've hardly found anyone who entertains a similar point of view. It gets lonely, but honestly that's fine.
Entertains the point of view/s in the article?
Makes me wonder if fans of Fountains of Wayne statistically have better marriages.
reminds me of this article...
http://markmanson.net/question
TL;DR: Don't set goals based on what makes you happy. Instead, decide what you're willing to suffer for.
I didn't agree with his opening premise of what everybody wants, so I couldn't finish reading.
Do you only read articles you agree with? That sounds like a strong case of confirmation bias. Besides, the core of the article does not reflect an elaboration of that paragraph, you should give it a try.
No, I read tons I disagree with. I didn't do well to elaborate on my objection in my original comment. Beginning an article with strong sweeping generalizations that are obviously not true is likely to turn me off, and it did in this case.
For what it's worth, the rest of the article delves into the "but"s and why a worldview corresponding to the initial paragraph isn't a realistic one.
Or "expect little and hope for more"
My grandparents lived long enough to celebrate a 75th anniversary. I remember I was old enough at the time to be cognizant of these issues and I asked them both what "the secret was to a long happy marriage". My grandma said: "well, when I look out the window and see your grandpa drive up in his truck after being away for awhile, I still get a little excited to see him". My grandpa said: "we have sex every night, well, now days we just rub our asses together a little". I think somewhere in there they had some pretty good old timers wisdom.
tl;dr
A happy marriage isn't a result of magically picking the right person.
My 2 cents: Of course it isn't. A happy marriage is the result of two conscious decisions - one from each person involved.
To sum it up with a quote I heard growing up:
"'Soul mates' are fiction and an illusion[...] yet it is certain that almost any good man and any good woman can have happiness and a successful marriage if both are willing to pay the price."
Of course, you should not marry or have kids - that way you will be better separated, an easier to tame slave. Thanks for not having relationships, thanks for not having people who stand up for you!
Then again, how are you going to quit your job, with its sweet golden handcuffs of medical benefits, when you have kids to provide for?
[0]
There are so many reasons why the whole marriage thing is a boondoggle. The most pithy is: 'Women marry men, expecting they will change. Men marry women, expecting they won't.' More often than not, both wind up disappointed.
Erring a bit more scientifically, the male and female brains are genuinely structured differently and process sensing input differently [1], [2]. It's no wonder they respond to the same situations differently. An anecdote: I've asked dozens of people: "What would you do if you were walking down the beach and you heard the screams of a child drowning?" The men unanimously say they'd dash to the water, tearing their clothes off as they run to the rescue. The women, not unanimously but overwhelmingly, say they'd run to get the life guard.
When the stakes are high in a marriage, agreeing on how to react can become very difficult and disagreement can lead to schisms in the relationship. It might be a disabled child, a layoff, a drunken one-night stand, serious accident, or any number of misfortunes. These misfortunes will push people into emotional territory they may have never been in before, and you can't know in advance how they'll react.
In the end, if you decide to marry, you're taking it on faith that the two of you will remain committed no matter what. You really have few indicators to go by.
[0] Speaking strictly in terms of man/woman marriages, the only place I have experience.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Female_Brain_(book)
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/books/review/Bazelon-t.htm...
[0][1][2] I still can't honestly believe that people actually believe in brain sex. Swathes of neuroscience researchers have told you that it's disingenuous, it's a classic tool of projecting inferiority onto women, and it ignores the reality of neuroplasticity. The brains of taxi drivers are different than the brains of the general population -- does this mean that we consider them to be naturally born to be taxi drivers?
Your anecdote reeks of social conditioning. This is literally a social trope.
My partner and I make decisions together and rationally, figuring out the best course of action for the two of us. Miraculously, even with her lady-brain, we're able to come to a consensus and agree with each other before talking the majority of the time.
[0] http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/11/brains-men-and-women-... [1] http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/is-the-brai... [2] http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/is-female-brain-innatel...
I just want to point out that even though the brains are equivalent, the sexual strategy for men and women is completely different and that's okay.
The differences in behavior can be explained by choosing the optimal strategy, rather than some deterministic brain chemistry.
This is slightly off-topic, but generally drowning people don't make sounds, as they're gasping for air or have their lungs already partially filled with water.
In both cases it is really hard to make loud sounds and most people would probably not recognize 'symptoms' of drowning.
> For most of recorded history, people married for logical sorts of reasons: because her parcel of land adjoined yours, his family had a flourishing business, her father was the magistrate in town, there was a castle to keep up, or both sets of parents subscribed to the same interpretation of a holy text. And from such reasonable marriages, there flowed loneliness, infidelity, abuse, hardness of heart and screams heard through the nursery doors. The marriage of reason was not, in hindsight, reasonable at all; it was often expedient, narrow-minded, snobbish and exploitative.
I hear this opinion everywhere, and I'm curious to see if there's any bearing to this idea. As far as I'm concerned, loneliness, infidelity, abuse, hardness of heart all occur with some regularity despite marrying for romantic reasons.
No mention of children, until we get this: "maddening children who kill the passion from which they emerged".
This solipsistic, navel-gazing age can't die fast enough.
What point are you making? That children can't somehow add additional stress to a relationship?
That this is a solipsistic, melodramatic and, ultimately, immature analysis of marriage.
Could you elaborate? What is solipsistic or even melodramatic about it?
+1 looking for elaboration. I mostly agree and want to know your reasons!
I don't think the author is arguing against having children. He seems to be arguing against a passion-driven, romantic ideal of what a relationship is which doesn't account for noisy children and which usually ends in deep disappointment. He seems to be arguing for a more pragmatic view (he calls it "pessimistic") which may enable us to get more out of our actual, non-idealized relationships.
You're going to be waiting for a long, long time.
I guess I count myself lucky in that I never bothered to look for anyone, not even in the context of casual sex. For me, people are such a complicated topic that I'd rather share my time with a cat than another human being. It's not to say that I don't enjoy the time I do share with my friend (yes, I literally just have one friend) but I can't see myself having anything but a friend or two in my life. I may be setting myself up for a lonely life in my later years but I've lived this way since college (never had much in the way of friends during my k-12 years). And honestly, I'd rather be lonely than miserable. I can always make a friend, but I can't unmake bad memories of a failed relationship/marriage.
The fact that nobody has responded to you concerns me. I'd much rather have a failed relationship with fond memories (which all but the worst of relationships will have) and personal growth (which every relationship will encourage given that you have the right outlook going in).
You're setting up a huge false dichotomy here. The choices aren't lonely or miserable, there's a huge spectrum, and you might feel those feelings at discreet points, but overall just developing the level of closeness that you do with another person in a prolonged relationship can help you see the beauty of the world and the people in it again.
From one previously lonely guy to another, I really hope you give it a chance.
Authenticity and communication I personally think are the two most important traits for a successful relationship.
If you don't feel like you can be your real self in front of that person, unable to share with each other your dreams, fantasies, desires, fears, faults and foibles, it is going to be difficult to build a relationship that can last.
I’ve been married twenty-one years, and neither of us are the same two people who got married all that time ago. There have been times when we’ve discussed if the two people we’ve become should stay married. There’s been times when love is strained, times when things are just comfortable, and times when my heart still beats faster when she walks in the room.
Part of this was borrowed without credit. https://web.archive.org/web/20160422073110/http://thephiloso...
It looks like the author [1] is associated with The Book of Life [2] which is referenced on the site you linked [3]. Likely all owned by the same person.
[1] https://twitter.com/alaindebotton
[2] http://www.thebookoflife.org/
[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20160316112501/http://thephiloso...
I think the current version of that is http://www.thebookoflife.org/how-we-end-up-marrying-the-wron... but I'm a little unsure about the authorship history now.
Edit: I agree with TACIXAT that both of these were written by Alain de Botton; the confusion came about because the older versions were unsigned, so it's easy to worry that the newer version could have been plagiarized. There's also a norm of revealing the publication history of your own stuff when you rework or republish it, so maybe the Times should have said "A version of this essay appeared in The Philosopher's Mail and appears in The Book of Life" to avoid any ambiguity.
Don't need the wayback machine, this is currently available here (and a great article):
http://www.thebookoflife.org/how-we-end-up-marrying-the-wron...
I've found this podcast [1] really insightful. The guy who presents it is Christian, but it's interesting whether you buy the Jesus thing or not.
[1] http://subversivekingdom.com/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-soulm...
It's the long form of this: https://youtu.be/zuKV2DI9-Jg
The author founded The School of Life - which I think is wonderful.
I thought I had read something like this before. The Philosophers' Mail had some very thought provoking writing but it appears to have gone under.
Yeah, I think this exact article was there but it's down now. I immediately checked my pocket archive and even though I pay for premium(meaning my library should be permanent) it's gone. I liked it when I first read it and I like it now.
The Philosophers' Mail is from the same people who started The School of Life. Alain de Botton is the author.
Oh cool, now NYT columnists are plagiarizing polyamorist marketing. That's so cool how we can engineer better sexual relationships than >250K years of biological and cultural evolution, and all it took was a little postmodern thinking.