quote:But here you are *automatically* putting compatablity before "in love". You see? We perfectly agree with each other.
We don't agree, though. You are saying that people can be in love with people they are not compatible with.
I'm saying if you filter out the people you know you will not be compatible with from the beginning, then you can't fall in love with them.
We are saying the exact opposite.
My way means that one dates much less often. On the upside, you can marry the guy you fall head over heels for, and do it based on that.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
m_p_h. In my gut, I disagree with that. Personally, I feel I have neither increased or decreased my responsibility toward my girlfriend/fiancee/wife throughout. I have, however, increased my level of commitment. I'll see if I can figure out a way to articulate it. It might also be a case of different strokes for different folks.
quote: To sum up, choose who you date based on possible compatibility. Choose who you commit to for love.
I prefer exactly the opposite approach. Date based on infatuation -- which is how we're defining love, here, apparently -- and then choose who you commit to based on compatibility.
Dating incompatible people can be incredibly fun and educational.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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I agree, when you're just playing around. For people who haven't dated much, dating just for fun is fabulous.
Hm...maybe I'd say your way for less dating experience, and my way for more.
Maybe it depends on your purpose for dating. You can definitely use dating as a way to experience life and exposed to things you wouldn't otherwise (my music collection is basically a personal dating history), but that does get messy. Because you can fall for people (and they for you) that you would never commit to, and that doesn't seem really fair.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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I think that the view of marriage as a sacred union is too tied up with a great deal of other cultural and theological views for anyone outside of the culture to "get it" completely. Using my amazing empathic skills I have deduced that those on the other side of the question see marriage as something which folks on this side of the question see as "important". In this case marriage is important kind of like going to college is important- sure, it can help you out in a number of different ways, but you can live a good life without it.
From the other side of the line (or my skewed view of it) marriage is not important- it is fundamental. Building the sort of community we want to build absolutely requires committed marriage with no premarital sex as the societal ideals. There are a number of other very important ideals which are also related, and all of them are required. In fact, the only real purpose that I can see for most religious "commandments" is the establishment of a certain kind of community.
However, establishing such a community is very very difficult due to human weakness, and even attempting the feat is pretty much impossible without a semi-isolated group, all of whom are committed to the same ideal. For that reason individuals are, to some extent or another, pretty much on their own as far as adhering to a certain set of principles- at least until conditions significantly change.
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quote: You can definitely use dating as a way to experience life and exposed to things you wouldn't otherwise (my music collection is basically a personal dating history)
Does it work in reverse? Because I recall you asked us to help you expand your music collection a few months ago. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Added: But to address the question, when I decided to stop using dating as adventure and world exploration, it meant the adventure and world exploration had to come some other way. Hence, I ask Hatrack.
Added: Okay, I'm done. This thread is horribly close to violating Kat's Rule of Life #6: Do not discussion love life or lack thereof on Hatrack..
quote:We don't agree, though. You are saying that people can be in love with people they are not compatible with.
So you are saying that it is a matter of choice. I haven't addressed that. I *agree* that it is a matter of choice who you fall in love with. My point is: don't fall in love with people with whom you are not compatable. I say this because it *is* possible to do so, and I think people should avoid it.
This is how you put compatability ahead of being in love. Early in my dating career, I did not follow this advice. I decided to follow it later after suffering because of it.
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I don't think you choose who you fall in love with. I do think you choose who you spend time with, and you have to spend time with someone in order to fall for them.
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quote:I don't think you choose who you fall in love with. I do think you choose who you spend time with, and you have to spend time with someone in order to fall for them.
I agree, although I think it's possible to fall for people you had absolutely no intention of falling for in the first place, like friends you would never consider marrying.
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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I'm going to side with Jacare's explanation as the reason I have such trouble with these threads.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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quote:I'm going to side with Jacare's explanation as the reason I have such trouble with these threads.
It's one of the reasons I think OSC writes the future in the Ender series as a collection of isolated planets populated entirely by like-minded people.
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quote: Date based on infatuation -- which is how we're defining love, here, apparently
I'm not willing to concede that. It think the confusion between chemical attraction, romantic love, and love* is leading to a lot of people not understanding each other.
*The closest I can come to articulating what I mean by this is something like what Paul describes in Corinthians.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Cohabitation before marriage can acutally increase the possibility of divorce according to a CDC study found here.
Here are some statitstics (mostly about women) from the article:
quote: Divorce is more likely when women marry at a younger age (48% of brides married before age 18 divorce in 10 years, compared to 24% married at age 25 or later), have a lower level of education, come from a single-parent home (12% more likely), were raped (same for all three ethnic groups), suffer from GAD, had a child before marriage or within 7 months of the marriage, and cohabitated before marriage (18% for non-cohabitators versus 24% for cohabitators)
I think that the reason that divorce is so frequent now is that it has become socially acceptable to divorce. Even 50 years ago divorce was socially unacceptable. That's why so many older couples seem more likely to stay married, there's still a mind set that divorce is unacceptable.
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If by some fluke someone did want to marry me, I would be totally committed, but for some reason I am terrified of the thought of my own wedding.
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andi330: no, cohabitation before marriage correlates with divorce. The causation could well be that people who are more likely to be willing to divorce are also more likely to be willing to cohabit; this should actually be pretty obvious, as those conservatives who are extremely resistant to divorce are also among those extremely resistant to cohabitation, almost always.
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I didn't phrase that very well. I mean to say that I agree with what Jacare said. And my views on marriage sometimes make it hard for me to find common ground here. Not always, but sometimes.
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I would love to be committed to the idea of marriage, but seeing as I pretty much can't in 98% of the US, I don't think I'll be getting married. But you never know what'll happen before I actually start thinking about getting married.
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quote:andi330: no, cohabitation before marriage correlates with divorce.
That's the only conclusion that can be directly drawn from that data. Anything further is just speculation, by either side.
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quote:I don't think you choose who you fall in love with. I do think you choose who you spend time with, and you have to spend time with someone in order to fall for them.
Which is *how* you choose. Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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Again: If proximity (or conversation, in ketchupqueen's case) is a key element in choosing who you fall in love with, what happens if you fall for one of your friends, with whom you are less than ideally compatible?
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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No You really, really can't... I would so rather not fall in love with another person again for as long as I live.
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quote:Again: If proximity (or conversation, in ketchupqueen's case) is a key element in choosing who you fall in love with, what happens if you fall for one of your friends, with whom you are less than ideally compatible?
Good question. Since I am notorious for being attracted to my guy-friends, perhaps I don't have a very good answer.
But I think falling in love requires some amount of requitement. Otherwise I think of it as a "crush".
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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Here are some other groups that don't value marriage as much as some other groups:
Blacks don't value marriage as much as, well, anyone else:
quote: At the same time, the decline in marriages has been even higher, prompting some experts to express fear for the survival of African American families. In 1960, 78% of African American households included a married couple; this rate deceased to 64% in 1970; and by the late 1980s, only 48% of African American households included both a husband and a wife. This downward trend continued, reaching a low of 39% by 1993 (Billingsley & Morrison-Rodriguez, 1998). According to the U.S. Bureau of Census, in 2000, 16% of African American males were married, as compared to 60% of whites; 37% of African American females were married (nearly twice as many unmarried) as compared to 57% of white females.
Baptists value marriage less than other Christians.
Massachussetts valued marriage more than any other state in 1994. (Utah is a sucky 27?!? Wow. Shame!)
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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Marriage? I'm 25 and can definately wait. I don't like the whole divorce option. I think that half the time it is just that people get tired too easily or too lazy to try to do something about their marriage. Of course there are a lot of times that I can't blame one or the other for divorcing these days. Seeing as how some people just muck up the whole thing.
BTW: Crashed and burned on my last girlfriend. A female friend of mine played wingman the other day and hooked me up with her friend (who we found out really, really, really likes me).
Posts: 2208 | Registered: Feb 2004
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
Before I finish reading all of this I would like to point out that this site is rather biased since it attracts 9 of 10 times the more "responsible" members of society.
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quote: 48% of brides married before age 18 divorce in 10 years, compared to 24% married at age 25 or later
See this to me doesn't suggest that the younger generation is less committed to marriage but that the vast majority of women 17 or younger are not responsible enough and aware of life's realities to understand what marriage truly is.
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quote:you have to spend time with someone in order to fall for them.
Or at least talk to them. (Witness quid and me.)
It took Fahim and I only about 15 minutes of online chatting for us to be extremely curious and unwilling to let go of each other.
Falling in love took somewhat longer - four or five days of chatting online for a couple of hours each day to fall in love and figure out that we were extremely compatible, religious issues aside.
We hadn't used telephone, microphones, or webcam up to that point, although I did see a very small picture of him that gave me very little to work off of.
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Before I finish reading all of this I would like to point out that this site is rather biased since it attracts 9 of 10 times the more "responsible" members of society.
Thanks!
Although I suppose we should recruit more irresponsible people. Their insights might be valuable.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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quote:We hadn't used telephone, microphones, or webcam up to that point, although I did see a very small picture of him that gave me very little to work off of.
Does that count?
Yeah. I consider chatting "talking".
With me, it was a couple of e-mails before I started to fall. By the time I talked to him "for real" (on the phone), I already had decided I wanted to marry him. By the time we physically met, we'd discussed marriage. Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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*laughs* Okay, tell me this. How long from encountering each other & chatting/email to falling in love to meeting in person to getting married? I want a timeline! Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Oh. MUCH longer than you two. It took a long time to get married, not because we wanted it that way, but because our parents fought it tooth and nail. (My husband asked my father for my hand in marriage and he said no! ) Plus there was the Temple prep class I had to do, and reserving a sealing room, and me finishing the semester at my job, and...
It took a while. If it had been up to us, we would have just eloped to the Temple. But since we had to live with our families afterward, we had to do things to please them. (At least, as much as they could be pleased. And they were not pleased anyway. Whatever.)
A year and a half, total.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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Wow, that is a long time. Yep, see, I was old enough - and estranged from enough family members - that what they wanted made no difference. Assuming they would have known. I've never wanted a big wedding, mostly because anything the family is involved in gets messy very fast.
Yeah, life is much simpler living in a foreign country. Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I didn't want a big wedding. It ended up being much more formal than I ever wanted. (But not THAT formal, and we did it for under $500, including Jeff's trip out and my dress.)
I did, however, manage to offend my future mother-in-law with the invitations (ask me about THAT sometime. )
But in the long run, we had to do as little harm as possible, because we want free babysitters for our kids. Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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Pragmatic as always. Hey, I hear you. And if you include transportation in the wedding cost, then we sure exceeded your budget, despite having no rings, no reception (unless you count the Flower Drum Chinese Restaurant with his two best friends & our witnesses after we registered our marriage), and spending $20 CDN on the dress.
Yep. Our big expensive was flying me and my cats out. Yowza!
Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:Again, I repeat my belief that compatibility is far more important than being "in love".
Beverly, you keep saying this like it is an either/or thing. It is possible to be both madly in love and have your head on straight enough to not marry someone incompatible.
Nope, that's me. Not that I generally consider the two to be mutually exclusive; just that the first makes me distrust the second (for me).
quote:Originally posted by katharina: In the vast majority of divorces, the lifestyle of the man goes up and the lifestyle of the woman and usually the children drops dramatically.
Not quite. Generally the lifestyle of the man drops slightly and the lifestyle of the woman and children drops drastically. Very rarely does anyone's lifestyle improve, at least not for 3-5 years afterward. Maintaining two households is simply more expensive than maintaining one.
quote:Originally posted by imogen:
quote: 48% of brides married before age 18 divorce in 10 years, compared to 24% married at age 25 or later
See this to me doesn't suggest that the younger generation is less committed to marriage but that the vast majority of women 17 or younger are not responsible enough and aware of life's realities to understand what marriage truly is.
To me it says something rather different. It says the vast majority of girls 17 and under who marry are not doing so for the right reasons. Honestly, what are the odds that the average 16-year-old is getting married because she is pregnant, and little else? That they may also not be responsible enough to commit for life at that age is a secondary consideration, IMO.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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So I read through this entire thread only to find that rivka has already posted what I wanted to say (re: Standard of life post-divorce). *sigh* ::points:: What she said.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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