Getting married and blowing off your friends without warning, C/D S/D

Carl, you're reading me entirely wrong - I'm fine with growing older and all that entails. It was SOMEONE ELSE who freaked out about his wife getting fat.

But as for the "escape hatch", yes, I do like having it, and that's precisely why I'd rather not be married. Because knowing that there's an easy escape hatch, yet neither of us wanting to ever use it, is what makes a relationship feel strong to me. Far more so than being locked in place by matrimony and third parties, IMO.

You know that you're allowed to end legal marriages these days, right?

Wait, nevermind. I wish I could delete that.

Lee, I don't care whether you want to get married or ever get married. I totally respect anybody's decision not to get married (it is the fundamental unit of the patriarchy and all). I mostly object to what I see as you universalizing your personal opinions on the subject, plus your weird hangups about married people getting old and fat due to marriage, but I really don't feel like arguing about it anymore. I sincerely wish you well.

xp It's just that you said 'In my experience, marriage leads to complacency.' and then cited examples of women saying they weren't being romanced (male complacency I guess) and men saying their wives don't make an effort with their appearance (female complacency) and commented yourself "Hey dude, you're married, it's not like your wife needs to look pretty to attract men anymore" (even though you later say you found this wrong and offensive). If you weren't using this as an example of "complacency" that you see then I don't get why you mentioned it and noted that women need to look pretty to attract men until they've 'got' them.

Anyway. I really don't think marriage is for everyone, and if you approach it as 'being locked down' or something then... it's probably not going to end well, and you're probably wise to come up with your own arrangement.

clusterfuck summary?

One admittedly small problem with building a strong, long-lasting relationship with no legal marriage is that after a certain number of years -- ten? fifteen? twenty? -- anyway at some point your insistance on not being married is going to start feeling very stubborn, pointless and irrational to everyone else around you. But if it gives you a starting place that is easier to build from, then it is obviously functional and not a problem at all.

Our downstairs neighbors had been together for about 17 years before they got married; they apparently had a back and forth about whether to get married or not and settled on "I don't believe in marriage", but many years later they were talking with a friend who was hemming and hawing about proposing and the dude was all "hey, if you love her go for it" and his partner was all "now wait just a second, what happened to 'we don't believe in marriage' you big jerk?" They were engaged the next week.

^^^ My two best friends were together at least 15 years and the same thing happened to them.

kinder, I worded those examples v badly I realize, trying to be terse, and they weren't good examples to begin with. Again, I should have been more clear that that's not how *i* think, and should have used my own experiences rather than others' as examples - I truly do not think that way myself, the "look pretty" bit. And I realize that comment made me come across as exacty the sort of ppl I can't stand IRL. Thanks for calling me out on that.

I'm gonna let this drop.

6. If you have a daughter, you're nearly 5 percent more likely to divorce than if you have a son.

― Mark G, Wednesday, March 7, 2012 5:36 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

why? it's weird, but not something i'm inclined to reject on the face of it. people are weird, after all.

5% of all bananas think they're pears

BREAKING NEWS

is this referring to absolute risk (of divorce) or relative risk?
what if you have no kids
what if you have a son and a daughter
does the presence of x no. of daughters further increase the risk
does the presence of x. no. of sons offset the risk

hate this stuff

oh wait i just saw where that came from. gonna read.

for a start, the paper says 'first-born daughter' vs 'first-born son'. Not 'daughter' vs 'son'.

parents of hermaphrodites them 2.5% more likely to get divorced

Difference between correlation and causation, ppl. What that statistic doesn't mean is that having a first born daughter necessarily means you are 5% more likely to divorce, as if one follows from the other. What it means is that, of couples divorcing, 5% more had one first-born daughter than a first-born son, and whatever caused that is opaque.

2% of the people who read this thread are likely to mistake their pinkie finger for a PT Cruiser within the next 5 minutes.

paper is here if you're interested: http://emlab.berkeley.edu/~moretti/sons.pdf

We begin by documenting the effect of having a first-born girl on the probability that a child grows up without a father in the household.

The effect is on the probability of divorce? That is an odd way of putting it. What they are documenting is the probablity, but the authors want badly to introduce the idea of cause and effect, so they phrase it in such a way that they can introduce the word. This is sneaky rhetoric, imo.

No, it's not really to do with divorce at all, I think. The context is how badly do fathers want to be part of the family once they know they're having a boy vs a girl. Divorce is one part of it, simply not marrying in the first place is another.

Actually there have been studies that show, if a couple is under considerable stress during the marriage, the first child is statistically much more likely to be a girl (girl babies often being more resilient than boy babies after all) so the correlation and causation might well be the other way around - they had a girl first because the marriage was under stress, and therefore much more likely to divorce with or without a child?

Will look for citation on that one some other time.

I was my parents' first born and they are divorced I always knew it was all my fault and those books at the therapist's office lied

friends who needs em

apropos of nothing guys, but am i alone in noticing this giant PT Cruiser on my hand???

That "study" is so full of unsubstantiated statements and conclusions I don't know where to start....

i.e. "Among women who have had an ultrasound test, we find that those who have a girl are less likely to be married at delivery than those who have a boy. This evidence suggests that couples who conceive a child out of wedlock and find out that it will be a boy are more likely to marry before the birth of their baby." WTF?

hold on let me find the citation for that

i.e. "Among women who have had an ultrasound test, we find that those who have a girl are less likely to be married at delivery than those who have a boy. This evidence suggests that couples who conceive a child out of wedlock and find out that it will be a boy are more likely to marry before the birth of their baby." WTF?

― everything else is secondary (Lee626), Wednesday, March 7, 2012 12:09 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dunno, seems like a fairly reasonable interpretation to me. of unmarried expecting couples that do know the sex of their child-to-be, those expecting a boy are more likely to have married by the time of delivery.

The whole thing seems predicated on "men like boys more than girls" or something. It's like the authors decided on the point they were trying to make first, and then tried to find the statistics to back them up, instead of the other way around.

The evidence, as they say, "suggests" an interpretation, but that's a pretty weak word and suggests a pretty weak connection between the evidence and the interpretation.

Now, if you were to interview a representative sample of the fathers, and a percentage of those fathers declared their intent to avoid marriage due to the presence of a girl in their sexual partners' womb, then they could more confidently state that such a connection exists and give a fair idea of how often it happens.

one of my decent housemates and i were talking about marriage this morning, and i basically summed up both of our feelings with, "look, if you want to get married, that's fucking fine, just stop talking to me about it, and for fuck's sake STOP equating marriage with love." so much dialogue among mainstream gays is about marriage equality and 'love reigning over all.' it's a fine sentiment, but equating the ability to marry someone (a supposed privilege granted by a state structure) to love (a very idiosyncratic, subjective, nebulous emotional/spiritual/etc feeling towards another person) is so wildly absurd that it blows my mind that people are so fucking dumb.

also, just to throw my two cents in— until the relationship i'm currently in, i never understood it when friends would blow me off b/c they were dating someone/in love with their partner or whatever....

and now, i totally understand it. i still care deeply for my friends, but i really want to spend as much time as possible with him, and if that means blowing other friends off, eh, i'm okay with that.

people fought wars for the luxury of being able to equate marriage with love

those people sucked

The whole thing seems predicated on "men like boys more than girls" or something. It's like the authors decided on the point they were trying to make first, and then tried to find the statistics to back them up, instead of the other way around.

― everything else is secondary (Lee626), Wednesday, March 7, 2012 12:33 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't get that impression at all. of course the report was written up after the research was completed, and therefore tends to emphasize the conclusions, but i don't see that as a problem.

The evidence, as they say, "suggests" an interpretation, but that's a pretty weak word and suggests a pretty weak connection between the evidence and the interpretation.

― Aimless, Wednesday, March 7, 2012 12:36 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's what i like about the phrasing. it's not conclusive, because the intent of the study was not to establish causation, it was merely to observe the behavior (and to speculate on the possible/likely causes). seems appropriate, and i have a lot more faith in these sorts of distanced observations of actual behavior than i do with people's accounts of why they supposedly did what they did (re: your suggestion for a study of men's self-reported intent).

marriage owns! i want everyone to marry and love it!

:)

I love the lack of explanation of "without warning" so far.

I mean, if a couple goes to lengths to get married without truly letting anyone of their friends know, that's a whole other issue.

6. If you have a daughter, you're nearly 5 percent more likely to divorce than if you have a son.
I disbelieve this.
― Mark G, Wednesday, March 7, 2012 5:36 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

why? it's weird, but not something i'm inclined to reject on the face of it. people are weird, after all.

― meticulously showcased in a stunning fart presentation (contenderizer), Wednesday, 7 March 2012 19:24 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hi.

I think maybe I'm unusual in that I didn't want a son. That sounds brutal, and of course I'm talking after the event(s). I can't imagine that having a son as well as the 2 girls would make our family any more complete.

Like anything I say, your position may well be different, I did get "are you going to try for a boy?" type q's, but nowadays nobody asks (they are more likely to say "your two are brilliant/easy/etc"). Although, the ones that do have sons seem to bond closer in their 'suffering' (I'm not even kidding!)

Stop teenagers from raping their female pit bull dogs: Bestiality is disgusting.

Uh?

"also, just to throw my two cents in— until the relationship i'm currently in, i never understood it when friends would blow me off b/c they were dating someone/in love with their partner or whatever...."

"and now, i totally understand it. i still care deeply for my friends, but i really want to spend as much time as possible with him, and if that means blowing other friends off, eh, i'm okay with that."

Take it from me: you will regret that if you keep it going too long, for a bunch of reasons. It's too much pressure on the relationship, you will lose your friendship chops, and it hurts people who might not really forgive. A honeymoon period is understandable, but when weeks become months become years, you end up spending all your time with your partner because there are no more alternatives. And that is a total romance killer.

that sounds pretty otm

Mark G, you're assuming that the statistic implies that people having daughters makes them divorce, because of something worse about having daughters. The statistic doesn't say that. It just notes a correlation (as stated by other people above).

Is that like saying "People in Eastbourne have the highest mortality rate" and "People in eastbourne live to the longest age" when in actual fact both can be explained by "Old people move to Eastbourne" ?

I had a very good college friend, also a former roommate, who called me last summer to tell me that

(a) he had left his girlfriend (a mutual friend) of six or seven years
(b) he had met a new woman and had gotten married to her and was very happy
(c) he was about to be a father, but this wasn't the reason he'd gotten married. he apologized for not letting me know – i wasn't upset, just sort of surprised - and i said 'that's great' and that was the last i heard from him.

i've called him a few times, but never heard back :/

I am skeptical about the healthiness of any relationship where the participants aren't able to integrate their previous social relationships into the marriage.

I actually think it's a pretty natural thing to do, at least at the beginning, and in many cases it actually takes pretty serious effort for the seriously-in-love to integrate previous social relationships. But it's utterly vital to do so over the medium and short term, says the guy whose 17-year relationship has been falling apart over the last year or two for this very reason.

medium and long term, I meant.

i have one friend who cut off all of his formerly important friendships after he started dating (and then married) this woman, and that relationship is straight-up emotionally abusive imo.

at the same time, i feel bad that i rarely see my good friends who don't live in town these days. in town is easy, but it's harder to take off for a weekend and either leave my gf alone or have her ditch all of her regular life stuff to go hang out with my friends.