The two couples I know who were the most star-crossed upon marrying also had the most psychopathic breakups and custody battles.

Er, I meant "starry-eyed".

My szister dated her husband for 5yrs, they were engaged for a couple after that and waitedt ohave kids adter that.

If only most people were as discerning

I am proof that you can do everything wrong and still have it work out well.

Somebody wins the lottery. Depending on winning the lottery is not a good tactic - in marriage or retirement planning.

Actually your average Amercan woman these days makes a good girlfriend and a terrible wife.
As a boyfriend you are treated well without having to invest much in the relationship.
You have outings such as dinner, boating, trips etc where you are treated with good sex, friendly attitude, etc...

Once you marry this can and usually does change, and once you have a kid you are powerless.

Once you marry and have a kid the once giving girlfriend who put you number one or as a high priority on her list is free to devalue you as much as possible.

Want a divorce? Great you will lose your house, half you assets, you will become a visitor in your child's life, pay child support/alimony and be subject to the woman scorned for years.

In America and most western cultures 90% of western women make good girlfriends but terrible wives. See nomarraige.com for much more pertinent info.

There is a reason most men brag about their girlfriends but don't brag about their wives.

The girlfriend experience = Good
The wife experience = Bad

> There is a reason most men brag about their
> girlfriends but don't brag about their wives.

Yes, there is. It's that "girlfriends" is term from the marketplace of love, where price competition is a factor for both parties. Showing off towards other people, and judging your life against the lives of others in a youthful way, is a big part of what those times are about. Young guys brag, because they're still trying to prove things to people.

Marriage takes you out of that marketplace. The woman you married deserves more consideration than that. She shouldn't be discussed as if her marriage, upon which she'll rely so heavily, is still being measured for intrinsic worth. You're not kicking the tires anymore... It's a done deal. My male buddies and I would share all sorts of reports with each other during our dating times... But once these women were our wives, things changed.

Men tend to concentrate their intimacy on their wives. It seems like women more often continue to share secrets from their marriage with girlfriends. I might be wrong about that, but either way, viva la difference.

> Once you marry this can and usually does
> change, and once you have a kid you
> are powerless.

Your comment suggests that somehow you think marriage is just a raw deal for men. I don't mean to come at you like a seventh-grader and say it sounds immature, but that's not the perspective of someone who's really seeking to unify their life with that of someone else, sharing their needs and fulfillments for a lifetime.

When you talk that way, about needing "power", your future wife, present wife, or ex- wife will wonder if you were ever really into it. And she'll be correct for wondering.

David's comment also reminds me of this old Paglia column about Helen and Anne (remember them?) at the White House. Grown-up love isn't like childish love:
_________________________________

Nor was the gay cause helped by the grotesque way both women reportedly behaved at the black-tie White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington, D.C., on April 26. Who among the heterosexual guests were ostentatiously nuzzling and necking like that? -- always the sign, by the way, of people insecure in their own mutual feelings. In a photograph that will live in infamy, the two women are standing with the tuxedo-clad president of the United States, a formal situation that demands dignity and respect. But Heche has her arm obnoxiously thrown around Ellen's shoulders, as if it were the annual softball picnic of a small-town gay bar.

Time will tell whether the Heche-DeGeneres liaison is built on rock or sand. What we definitely don't need, however, is more manic public hi-jinks that make lesbians seem shallow, flighty, immature, crass and provincial.

As a boyfriend you are treated well without having to invest much in the relationship.

Maybe boyfriends should be investing more time and energy on finding the right person.

Once you marry this can and usually does change

Of course this changes. You're not two people meeting up for drinks and sex anymore. You're wrestling with completely meshing your lives together, financially, physically and emotionally, and when you have kids, there are new people who need to be woven into that fabric. The hormones that made you both want to be all over each other have changed into something more appropriate for long-term bonding.

Want a divorce? Great you will lose your house, half you assets, you will become a visitor in your child's life, pay child support/alimony and be subject to the woman scorned for years.

Yes, there's that risk. Crid said this better than I will, but when you marry, you intertwine your entire lives together, and the expectation is that you will be doing it forever. No backsies. Unwinding those threads is difficult in the best of circumstances and impossible after you have children.

If you lost your house, it's probably because your kids live there. Half your assets go to your ex because that's what you promised when you married her. Courts actually seem less likely to assume that the mother is automatically the best caregiver now than they were in the past and are more open to joint custody agreements. But usually, someone has to have custody of the kids, so someone is going to be a visitor in their child's life. It's the reality of divorce, and if the mother was the primary caregiver before, courts are more likely to keep that arrangement.

As for the woman scorned, yes, you'll have to deal with her. You married her.

Crid, one thing I tell young people: True love does not make you feel like you are drugged. If it does, it's not love; it's something else. I can't help but wonder how many people mistake that drugged feeling for love. I did.

It looks as though crid and Monica disagree with my comments and are looking to detour around what I was saying.

Most American/western women, and again I'm going to say roughly 90% make good girlfriends because at this stage if they show too much of their whiney, bitchy demanding sides the boyfriend is free to dump them without much cost to him. So they are friendly, agreeable, act like team players, don't use sex as a weapon etc...
Therefore they often misepresent themselves as being nicer friendlier and more supportive human beings than they truly are. Once marraige and or a child arrives the balance of power shifts because the woman can act horribly now and has the full eweight of the courts and the government to penalize the man if she is not 100% happy for any reason.

Please go to nomarraige.com and see if they don't tell it like it really is.

> Therefore they often misepresent themselves as
> being nicer friendlier and more supportive human
> beings than they truly are.

So you're a tortured little guy in a world that doesn't care, a world you never created... A grim planet of nuance and intrigue, animal desperation and chessboard deceptions... A dark world where good men have no friends, no community, and no light from seniors or literature or culture. You're just fucked:

> Once marraige and or a child arrives the
> balance of power shifts

So don't get married, OK? You keep talking about power. Marriage isn't for people who're fascinated with power.

>>Please go to nomarraige.com and see if they don't tell it like it really is.

Your wish is my command, David M.

Your (twice now!) recommended website tells me that if I want to find a wife who is "Like how American women were in the 1950s America", I need to take my wife-catching butterfly net to a country that scores appreciably lower than the USA in as many of the following categories as possible:

(My summary); literacy, income, live births per 1,000, college education, healthcare availability, gender equality (natch!), life expectancy, environmental record...god, the list goes on and on!

But countries with the HIGHEST homicide rates?
Also great for wives.
Just fancy that!

So David, I'm guessing that those 90% of women who are scheming to find ways to trap a man into a loveless marriage so that they can pull out their false teeth and real personalities must be married to the most sainted segment of the male population. I'm sure those men remained wonderful after the marriage. I'm sure that they continued to romance their wives, share in the chores at home, finance luxury vacations, and randomly surprise those bitches with gifts. Not that I'm saying that's what they should be doing, but you just make me wonder what part any of these men have who find those tricky women during the dating period, marriage, and parenthood parts of these relationshiips. I think if the numbers you quote are accurate then maybe I'll try to organize those women. Maybe instead of duping some useless shmoe, we can just work on taking over the world.

Therefore they often misepresent themselves as being nicer friendlier and more supportive human beings than they truly are.

Bah, not true. Misrepresentations like this fall apart with a little effort. Courtship should last a good long while before marriage. Over a reasonable time frame, in which you get to know a woman well, and her family and friends, it's vanishingly unlikely that a facade of the sort you describe could be maintained. With a little attention you can easily spot the red flags that indicate a woman isn't a person of constant character, which is key to a successful relationship. You can't know in a day or a week (unless she's awful) but in six months, yeah.

It's difficult for anyone except the most accomplished sociopath to hide who they are for very long. If you spend a lot of time with someone for a few years, you'll notice a lot about them if you keep your eyes open. Maybe she's nice to you and likes sex, but treats her mother terribly and curses at the waiter. People will tell you who they are if you care to listen. How did her other relationships end? What does she say about other boyfriends? If you know them, what do they say about her?

I'm always interested when people present Nomarriage as "telling it like it is." It's like saying the NOW website speaks for all women's experience.

Too many people are happily married for me to believe that the problem is with American women. Some people are better at this mating stuff than others.

I'm not throwing stones here. I was divorced, and I spent a full year complaining about how terrible my ex was before I looked in the mirror, realized I was being a whiny, petulant child and moved on. I was an epically poor judge of character, and I knew I had to either get better at it or not marry again, but there was only so much blame I could lay at his feet. He was a douchebag, but I was pretty enthusiastic about marrying that douchebag.

Healthy marriage isn't for people fascinated by power. But go to one of those "I Still Do" marriage conferences where they try to get couples to "renew their vows" and throw in that bit for the woman's vow of "Love, honor and OBEY"?

WTF is that? Do women even have that in their vows anymore?

And I will go on the record again as saying that I take responsibility for my part in my divorce. The signs were there. I was just too young and naive to see them. While my ex is an asshole, he was always an asshole. There was no bait and switch there. Again, that's on me. His actions and behavior are his responsibility but I do blame myself for not having the emotional maturity and strength not to marry him. I have no problem admitting that I was dumb.

Well, David's problem is probably that he got married already, to a hottie with weak character who's now divorcing him. David is now financially screwed, bitter, and wanting absolutely no culpability in the mess he helped to create.

Look, I'm 25. I'm watching friends of friends get married off like crazy this summer - some are well-matched, most are not. If I were a groom-to-be, and I noticed that my bride (who looks just great! because she's lost 20 lbs to fit into her dress!) was more passionate about her wedding centerpeices than about me, I'd get skeptical. But all these guys are just rolling with it, so in my opinion they 'll have no one to blame but themselves in 15 years when they've got a mess on their hands.

Therefore they often misepresent themselves as being nicer friendlier and more supportive human beings than they truly are.

Actually, I do this all the time, especially at work. :-P

What Jody said.

Furthermore, when people talk about "the 1950's" in this context, they're usually talking about television sitcoms: As if television ever represented what people's lives were really like, or as if television were every supposed to be instructive to us.

I doubt it.

@Sam: "...they 'll have no one to blame but themselves in 15 years when they've got a mess on their hands."

Amen to that! If you won't open your eyes in the first place, you can't really claim you were blind. I remember my buddy, years ago, saying about his fiancee, "She's just got a couple little problems she needs to work out, and everything will be fine." Immediately, I heard the bells going off:

Doom...Doom...Dadoom! Doom...Dadoom...Dadoom...Dadoom!

seems like the is a lot of ignoring or other truths here...

one is that people change. sometimes for well, and sometimes for ill. sometimes in ways that you could not have imagined. I would doubt that a guy whose wife has such bad post-partum after the first kid that she kills it, knew that was coming. But that's extreme off the charts. You may find though, that there are women who change after kids... and just never really come back.

which leads to the second, which is perverse incentives. I think the low-end figure for how many divorces are started by women is roughly 70%. {Glenn cites 67% from multiple sources:}Glenn's Citation Pages
But as MonicaP and Crid both show, there are vast groups of people who feel that how divorces shake out currently is correct. That the guy SHOULD be on the hook for stuff, with the belief that the woman is providing some kind of impossible to duplicate services for the kids, so she shouldn't have to be on the hook for stuff.

Amy pointed out that it's not just men that find hope an just jump... but there are 2 different things going on when people get hitched. One is that you hope you have learned almost everything about your partner, before you think about marriage. The other is that divorce was once almost impossible unless there was infidelity. So you REALLY had to try. There were no strange incentives to get out, because it was hard to do so...

Now, it seems oddly painless to do so. Though in retrospect, I think a lot of people would say it isn't. But what they have done is ripped off the bandaid, and are now flooded with rage over that pain, and what is done is done. So they just move on.

Which brings me back to the practical upshot of what other people have written... which is that marriage has too many downsides, and shouldn't be approached.

But is that what we really want? Do we want to make marriage so onerous, that nobody will do it, thus making many more fatherless families. I would assume people will still do what humans are designed to do, which is procreate.

Or do we want to figure out how to make incentives to get married and stay that way? I don't mean govt. incentives, or anything like that. What is it that caused us to want to have families and partner off to begin with? And what things will convince both people to keep dancing instead of one walking away because it's easy?

I would assume people will still do what humans are designed to do, which is procreate.

"Not I," said the cow.
"Not I," said the duck.
"Not I," said the pig.
"Not I," said the goose.

You're on your own, Little Red Hen.

> That the guy SHOULD be on the hook for stuff

I can't understand this. YES: Men who marry women and (especially) start families with women "SHOULD be on the hook for stuff". I just don't understand how these wordings could even come to mind for you. Aren't we talking about responsibility? Isn't that the topic?

Apparently it isn't. With this loose-goose forgiveness in divorce just as in gay marriage, people think these unions are all about being able to take things, as individuals, from government. Nobody seems grown up enough to understand that they'll be expected to make efforts and sacrifices, that there will be costs.

> the belief that the woman is providing some
> kind of impossible to duplicate services for
> the kids, so she shouldn't have to be on
> the hook for stuff.

First of all, the women are providing a "some kind of impossible to duplicate services"... But that's the most pussy-footed description of "motherhood" that I've ever read.

Secondly, women ARE on the hook for stuff. You can readily Google it yourself; women who divorce (and their children) are at far greater risk for lives of poverty.

> What is it that caused us to want to have
> families and partner off to begin with?

Human nature and the containment thereof. Marriage is like democracy.

And what things will convince both people to keep dancing instead of one walking away because it's easy?

Important question. We're talking about encouraging a lot of people to change their opinions, so a tall order. But I think that it's comprised of two things. First, what you have already mentioned, people need to understand that if it is fairly easy *legally* to get divorced, that divorce is the sort of thing that sticks with you. It will leave a scar. The second thing, which is what I have been on about, is that it's tremendously important to choose your mate well.

Related to my second point: people should delay marriage until they have their lives a bit more together than your average 25-year old. It wasn't necessarily the case 50 years ago, but now it seems that a man or woman at 25 still does a fair amount of career and personal development in the next few years before being ready to build a stable future. That kind of thing may lead to people who were well-suited for one another growing apart.

SwissArmyD, the crack at post-partum depression is just really classy. Do some reading. Do you think mental illness is the fault of the person afflicted? That type of "change" doesn't fit with the rest of this discussion because it's chemical and treatable.

People do change a little, but there are things you can think about ahead of time to better your chances of being with someone you'll like after years and years. If you even want to get married (I do) wait until you're old enough to have lived alone, supported yourself entirely, and gone through something significantly challenging together.

The first year I dated my boyfriend, my father was in the hospital in a coma and then recovering with massive brain damage and my boyfriend's mom had breast cancer - surgery, chemotherapy, the works. My boyfriend was rock solid for me, and I took really good care of him too. Being in a lot of pain and still being able to care for someone else's pain - that's a good sign. Don't commit for life until you know how you'll both act together when something awful happens.

And what things will convince both people to keep dancing instead of one walking away because it's easy?

No easy answer to this, but I'd say start with telling people they have a choice. Marriage should not be the default life choice any more than kids should be. If you need the thrill of new love to be happy, don't get married. If you need to always be No. 1 to your partner, don't have kids. After that, people need to understand that they're not always going to be happy and fulfilled. And I don't mean bad days. Kids have bad days. Adults have bad years, and that's normal.

i am grateful for this place. i used to read here and elsewhere and accept at face value the level-headed, well considered replies from commenters as being indicative of their true offline selves

since then i've realised some things (i'm a slow learner):

first, some complete whackjobs are able to come across as normal, well-balanced people online

second, commenters defend their personal circumstances (because they're not like those other jerks) and even hold them up and themselves as superior somehow..."we do it; what's wrong with you? you must not be trying hard enough"

finally, no matter what the the relationship between average men and women in any area of modern life, men are at a disadvantage and at fault. in spite of all the attempts by commenters at fair mindedness i'm not debating whether men are or not or the fairness of it - it's the gist of all the arguments/comments i see here. somehow it always comes back to him

western women and particularly western men have a huge blindspot where men are concerned

how bad will things have to get before women and some men will admit that there is a problem and stop telling these guys to man up or grow a pair?

no matter how short or unhealthy our lives become relative to women's or how brutish. no matter how many of us lose our jobs or our kids, get put in prison on false charges or for non-payment. no matter how many of us die in wars or on the job or by suicide. no matter how many boys get left behind. it's our fault - we just don't try hard enough

Yeah, it's tough out there, ain't it?

no matter how short or unhealthy our lives become relative to women's or how brutish. no matter how many of us lose our jobs or our kids, get put in prison on false charges or for non-payment. no matter how many of us die in wars or on the job or by suicide. no matter how many boys get left behind. it's our fault - we just don't try hard enough

Wait, you want to blame the fact that men die in war and at their own hands on American women, too?

It makes no difference who's "at fault." Trying to tease out why any individual marriage ends is not something I want to waste my time doing. When a single mother of five complains that poor single moms have few job prospects, we tell her to make better choices. I hold men to the same standards.

If your marriage failed, you made a poor choice. Maybe you never could have seen it coming (and there are certainly divorces like that), but the fact remains that you made a poor choice. Why is it so hard for people to admit, "I did this poorly" and say "I'll do it better next time?" Why are we so desperate to find someone, anyone, to blame for the messes we make of our lives?

> "no matter how short or unhealthy our lives become relative to women's or how brutish. no matter how many of us lose our jobs or our kids, get put in prison on false charges or for non-payment. no matter how many of us die in wars or on the job or by suicide. no matter how many boys get left behind. it's our fault - we just don't try hard enough"

Well, theOtherJim, the feminist, pussy-whipped Gelding-In-Chief in the White House sure seems to agree with you. Maybe if men just get "knocked across the head" more, as Obama urges, we'll do better, huh?

In America and most western cultures 90% of western women make good girlfriends but terrible wives.

Depends on your definition of good/bad wife. If you want a wife that thinks the sun shines out of your fat un-kept ass no matter what then yeah ok no western women for you. Every culture has a basic world view and you really should find one that matches yours. If you want a wife that's ok with your boozing then go with Russian women. If you want a wife that's blissfully happy she's not dodging bullets or your fist then go for conflict wives from Easter Europe. If you want a wife that will let you smack her around then look to the middle east. Just remember that any of these women may drastically change due to culture shock and you could get in even deeper shit.

I'm always curious as to what constitutes a "Good Wife" (or husband) and what you are supplying in return.

Most divorces unless we are talking about people with money (80K+ incomes) tend to leave both parties worse off. She has the house and half your assets but for most Americans that's actually a bank owned house and a big fat bag of debt. So unless she's stupid getting a divorce is not something she will do for shits and giggles. One older guy kept trying to paint his wife as this evil harpy. I really wanted to tell him that it's mainly because he's a fucking self riotous asshole that feels he should be obeyed by right of his glory. But dad told me that calling senior citizens asshole is not polite.

Sam that wasn't a "crack" it's truth, and it happens on occasion. It's not straightformard, nor is it always "treatable"... It is the extreme. Post-partum itself happens a lot, and usually gets better with time and attention. Sometimes it doesn't. The point is, when you got married, you couldn't forsee the change. You simply hoped for the best, hoped that all would be well with your wife. You love her, you don't want her to be in pain. Things change for both of you when you have children. These ARE changes that no matter how long you have known a woman, you can't tell what they will be. Usually they are small and don't last that long. They tend to wash in with the lack of sleep you both face, the incresed stress of having another person to care for and so on. Once both start to get a handle on that whole kid thing, things often smooth out. For some people they never do. Whatever has changed within them is permanent. Not necessarily bad, but often quite different.

Crid, let me be a little clearer. When I say stuff... Imagine a couple who make roughly the same salaries, and are both professionals. One unilaterally decides to no longer work outside the home, instead taking care of children. At some point 10 years later, the marriage ends. Would you expect the person who stayed home to re-enter their career? Would you expect that 5-7 years later they would be working their way back up?

Given that situation, would You impute one person's income and not the other for child support purposes? Which one would it be?

To your other point about poverty, I have seen those studies, and 2 things strike me about what that might mean. Wouldn't you award custodianship [ie. where the kids mostly live] to the person who has the better job and can pay for everything, and let the person who hasn't been working get back on their feet? That idea makes some people shake with rage, because it's merely pragmatic.

Secondly if you follow that pragmatism, you are enforcing a responsibility that some parents shun, and others are never allowed to have. That both parents are required to help raise the kid, and once they are on more equal footing financially, they can do that more easily.

You talked to me about pussyfooted description of motherhood, but you should read the one about fatherhood after a divorce. "can see the kids every other weekend and wednesday nights." Demanded and enforced by the mother of the children, because obviously the father really isn't that necessary, as long as the check clear.

If both people are required to make a good raising of kids, then they are both required, after the divorce as well. The more those responsibilites are shared, the better the outcome will be. Why is there law and precedent that allow this not to be the case?

One unilaterally decides to no longer work outside the home, instead taking care of children. At some point 10 years later,

I'm not doubting that it happens, but I've never known anyone to make that kind of decision unilaterally. The couples I know have decided that they'd like their children to have access to one parent 24/7, and that's usually the mother. For people who do experience a unilateral decision like that, I guess the best I can say is don't make the mistake of having a second child. And please, spend that 10 years trying to get her back to work.

The more those responsibilites are shared, the better the outcome will be.

We agree on that. I even know a couple who lived in the same house after their divorce so they could both be available to their children, but that takes a remarkable personality.

Wouldn't you award custodianship [ie. where the kids mostly live] to the person who has the better job and can pay for everything, and let the person who hasn't been working get back on their feet?

"Pragmatic" is where we get in trouble when it comes to families. Divorce can be emotionally devastating for parents and kids, and the court has the impossible task of trying to create something workable out of a bad situation. If the kids have been at home with mom for five or six years, is it best for the court to try and rework their care arrangements to fit what looks good on paper? (Not saying I know the answer, just that there's so much more involved than who can pay for summer camp.)

Swiss, why did you marry your ex-wife? What happened to help you come to that decision? What did you love about her?

What I mean to say on pragmatism, MonicaP is that a change IS going to happen, and momma can no longer stay home with them, she has to go to work. It's never good for the kids regardless, and that's why I hold so closely to what Crid says about choosing well, even though it is too late for me. This is one of those roads you start down where every decision makes logical sense on it's own, but leads you to a place you didn't want to go. It is bad for the kids. That being said, what is less bad for them? Letting their mother decide to continue not working because she doesn't really need to, based on what the court awarded her. Making completely sure that when the kids are older she still won't have a better job?

The point about who keeps the house and such is a cruel double edged sword. It allows as many things as possible to remain static. This is good if the kids are little, but it becomes a vast millstone when they are older. The transfer of money from one partner to the other allows that other partner to do things that make no sense in the long run. Like keeping a house and car and other things that cannot be sustained on her own salary on the theory that it's all for the children. When getting rid of all that stuff vastly improved the flexibility of the family overall. That won't change what each player pays in, probably, but there is less of a freakout if the kid needs braces. But it is a lot easier to spend someone else's money.

An aside on that unilateral not going back to work? You need to talk to guys about that. I would suspect that many women will claim that they made the decision together when that wasn't the case. My own ex doesn't bother claiming that. She insists that it was her choice alone to make, even all these years later.

> Imagine a couple who make roughly the
> same salaries, and are both

I DON'T WANT TO. I don't want to imagine this. I don't have to, and you can't force me to. Why can't you hear this?

> Given that situation

NO. No no no.

We should not build our interstate highways to make them safe for (or from) drivers who've been drinking, or who've been watching TV on their Iphones.

We should not compose our marriage policies for people who don't take them seriously, or don't have the maturity to do it well anyway.

"Given that situation" is really the only argument you have. I've been hearing it from divorcing people my whole life, and I'm not a young man. People say 'But you don't understand, the bad situation has already happened!'

(Actually that's not the first thing they say. The first thing the say is what we've been hearing throughout these threads: 'The other party in this marriage screwed everything up, and I need society to pat me on the head and say that I'm the one who's right!')

Well, goddamit, no more. Nobody can pretend they didn't know what the risks are... It's been going on for too long.

Rather than make you feel better about yourself, I'd rather put my attention to making sure it doesn't happen again... Because this situation is NOT "given". People are making these mistakes too aggressively; these aren't unpredicatble earthquakes. Don't feign surprise. If you're that naive, you shouldn't have married: I know too many people who've done it well by seeing the world as it is.

> Demanded and enforced by the mother
> of the children, because obviously
> the father really isn't that
> necessary, as long as the
> check clear.

Well, fella, if the father isn't sleeping down the hall from the kids, so he can wake up and boil some water when the kid gets the croup, or to turn on the lights and talk about last summer's camping trip when the kid's had a nightmare, then we're not really talking about fatherhood anyway.

I know some father's who've done the best they could from the house around the corner... But it's still unspeakably pathetic. And I certainly make no personal time for men or women who speak badly of their "co-parent".

> If both people are required to make a
> good raising of kids, then they are
> both required, after the divorce as well.

So if the driver has to drive home, then he has to drive home after a couple of drinks, as well?

No.

Don't bother me with your personal problems. I'm a taxpayer, not your intimate friend.

> "Pragmatic" is where we get in
> trouble when it comes to families.
> Divorce can be emotionally
> devastating for parents and kids,
> and the court has the impossible
> task of trying to create something
> workable out of a bad situation.

Exactly.

Look, I'm 25. I'm watching friends of friends get married off like crazy this summer - some are well-matched, most are not. If I were a groom-to-be, and I noticed that my bride (who looks just great! because she's lost 20 lbs to fit into her dress!) was more passionate about her wedding centerpeices than about me, I'd get skeptical. But all these guys are just rolling with it, so in my opinion they 'll have no one to blame but themselves in 15 years when they've got a mess on their hands.

Posted by: Sam at June 22, 2010 10:20 AM
----------------------------------------
You say they have "no one to blame but themselves."
You have highlighted one of the Major problems with the view on relationships, in that no matter what, men get the blame and men pay. And women, the government, and the courts don't give 2 shits about equal protection under the law.
Why do we automatically blame men? It's become automatic hasn't it?

Why do men have to become visitors in their children's lives? Why do men pay alimony and child support?
If we are equal how come their aren't an equal amount of women paying men?

Boy, You girls really got angry! I must have touched a nerve!

And to touch a nerve there has to be some truth as to what I said, otherwise it would be easily dismissed.

I see women get angry and deny and defend things to the nth degree rather than admit the truth.

I see women get angry and deny and defend things to the nth degree rather than admit the truth.

Nah. I post here because it's fun.

But by that logic, there must be some truth to the statement that divorced men share the burden of blame in their own divorces, otherwise you wouldn't have responded.

And to touch a nerve there has to be some truth as to what I said, otherwise it would be easily dismissed.

Maybe it just annoyed everyone because it was stupid.

And to touch a nerve there has to be some truth as to what I said, otherwise it would be easily dismissed.

Unless you stopped reading comments, I'd say that you were easily dismissed.

Well, David M, I feel the similarly about the woman who just married the boyfriend who pushes her into walls when he's mad. Not going to end well. It's stupid and sad. (I do think that example is more sad than these men who are ignoring the fact that their brides have wedding mania and aren't thinking much about the marriage.)

Crid:
> Don't bother me with your personal problems. I'm
> a taxpayer, not your intimate friend.

Unfortunately, the law requires that you be bothered by this.

The law prohibits custody and visitation to be dealt with by prenuptial agreements.

The law prohibits couples from following Rabbinic or Shariah law.

The law sets out specific requirements for how things have to proceed upon separation and divorce.

In short, even if (like I do) people didn't want to bother you as a taxpayer with their personal problems, they really have no choice - they are prohibited from doing otherwise.

>>no matter how short or unhealthy our lives become relative to women's or how brutish. no matter how many of us lose our jobs or our kids, get put in prison on false charges or for non-payment. no matter how many of us die in wars or on the job or by suicide. no matter how many boys get left behind. it's our fault - we just don't try hard enough

>>Posted by: theOtherJim at June 22, 2010 11:35 AM

Good one! Ditto for David M. But, stop and think here. Are the majority of commenters even capable of understanding what is being done to men in the US and UK?

If they do understand, they believe, as you say, that it is always the man's fault. Oh, sure, once in a while they will make some token comment about women, but in the end, if you are f'ked by the courts, by the government, it was all your fault.

I don't think it's wrong to come here and post on a blog where the majority of commenters are boorish and totally devoid of empathy with anything male, except themselves. Just don't expect them to be able to get it, because they can no more understand the male experience after divorce than an elephant can fly. Every man has to personally experience it to figure it out.

The answer as I have said is any man in the US who isn't working on an exit plan is an idiot. Don't be an idiot.

"Well, fella, if the father isn't sleeping down the hall from the kids, so he can wake up and boil some water when the kid gets the croup, or to turn on the lights and talk about last summer's camping trip when the kid's had a nightmare, then we're not really talking about fatherhood anyway." Crid.

[hmm, boiling water for croup? we never did that, why would you? You just carry them around on their bellies in the crook of your arm angled slightly up so they can breathe well while they are coughing. Pat their backs and sing to them and pace. 'Course, it mightn't have been croup technically, since it only lasted 2 days.]

Interestingly for years I was the father who did all this, and still do when I can, but I was invited out of that role. Both kids still call me on the phone when they are upset. You seem to be missing the point that your exclusion can be done entirely against your will, for reasons that may never be conveyed to you. You didn't have kids when you divorced, right? It looks a bit different on the inside than the out. Seems like you would like to discount that this can be done unilaterally.

> Unfortunately, the law requires
> that you be bothered by this.

Yeah? So how's that working out for you? How's that working out for everyone? Not too well, from what I can see. Weenies, male and female, scurry across our landscape making squeaky noises, imploring distant parties to take a personal interest in the outcome of their lives... And they make this request in a moment of profound failure and neediness.

What the "law requires" is that I suffer the emotional incompetence of children of divorce as they grow up with sketchy feelings about one gender, or the other, or both, with the boys getting violent and the girls getting pregnant, and both often getting divorced in turn.

> The law sets out specific requirements
> for how things have to proceed upon
> separation and divorce.

See what Monica said above. It's an impossible task, and I'm not interested in investing in alchemy. For some reason you thought the family courts could turn coal into gold. I'm sorry, but not surprised, that this didn't work out for you, and I'm not interested in hiring more voodoo artists for the judges' chambers.

> they are prohibited from doing
> otherwise.

Says who? I never told them to marry badly.

> totally devoid of empathy

My empathy is especially powerful and precious, so I save it for those who need it most, the defenseless ones. Not for grown men (and women).

> You seem to be missing the point
> that your exclusion can be done
> entirely against your will

Then how come there are so many loving, attentive, thoughtful men for whom it doesn't happen? And how come these men so often raise other men for whom it doesn't happen?

> Seems like you would like to
> discount that this can be done
> unilaterally.

If "discount" means 'don't care', then you might be right. How personally happy were you expecting the rest of us to be when you thought you'd married well? As you imagined fulfillments and success to come streaming into your life, were you going to demand that we share in the booty, as you now demand that we share in sorrow?

Golly, have we met?

"Then how come there are so many loving, attentive, thoughtful men for whom it doesn't happen?" Crid.

Maybe they got lucky... Think of the numbers. If 50% of first marriages end in divorce, and if 70% of those divorces were initiated by women... isn't that about 33% of married guys eventually coming home to find the locks on their doors changed? 50% of guys chose well to begin with. Or tossed the coin well.

Or did I do the math wrong? How did it work out for you? Did you leave or did she? Somebody made their mind up it was over.

My empathy is especially powerful and precious, so I save it for those who need it most, the defenseless ones. Not for grown men (and women).

A-fucking-men. Thanks, Crid. It's nice to see a proper set of priorities once in a while.

A coin toss??? Ohfergodssake.

The notion of "50% of marriages ending in divorce" seems to be a disputed figure; furthermore it doesn't apply to every kind of person equally.

http://www.divorcereform.org/nyt05.html

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/d/divorce.htm

Rather than being a 50-50 coin toss, what you'll find is that certain factors increase the likelihood of divorce, and certain factors decrease the likelihood of divorce. You'll find higher divorce rates among some kinds of people, and lower divorce rates among others (big shock). (And the "future divorce" projections are based on current trends, from whatever info we have, which is sometimes limited... the projections aren't etched in stone).

[Seriously I don't understand the or tossed the coin well. The only people experiencing bad marriages purely by chance are the children who happen to be born into those marriages. The adult parties involved initially came to such a marriage through choice. That's a key part of being an adult - choice and responsibility for one's choices]

The message many of you are giving is if a man is stupid enough to marry the wrong woman, don't bore us with anything that happens to him, because after all it's his fault. Reverse that and see how you like it.

A blogger once said he understood there are some good women in the US. He added the problem is those good women don't seem to be able to distinguish themselves from bad women so we men can tell the difference until it's too late. Therefore, his conclusion is that men are better off not taking the risk.

Figures show a lot of men are coming to that conclusion.

>>(My summary); literacy, income, live births per 1,000, college education, healthcare availability, gender equality (natch!), life expectancy, environmental record...god, the list goes on and on!

>>But countries with the HIGHEST homicide rates?
Also great for wives.
Just fancy that!

So, when a man moves to one of these countries, does he become illiterate? Does he care if they have gender equality? (The US doesn't have gender equality; it has female supremacy.) If he has a good pension, does he care if his neighbors make less?

Just because poor kids in the jungle living in grass huts with no doctor within hours, die young, does that mean his kids are going to die young? If he already has a college degree, what does he care about the number who get degrees?

Health care? Several years ago, my little grandson in the US came down Thursday afternoon with a fever and vomiting. The doctor said he could squeeze him on Monday morning. I called a med student I knew, and he said it was roseola, and not to worry, it wasn't serious. Saturday, the rash came out. It was roseola.

Here in my Third World village if you kid gets sick at 3 am, you ring the bell on the private clinic, and the doctor treats him, usually if it's a good doctor the visit is around $12 USD. What you have in the US isn't health care at all. And, it's gonna' get worse. Some of you will eventually be here for medical care. For those who can afford it, and it's not that expensive, Mexico has better medical care than most people in the US get.

My doctor friend runs a clinic, which specializes in deliveries. They have had around 1500 babies in the 5 or 6 years. I once asked him how many of the babies don't make it. He was shocked at the question. He has never lost one yet, and says if he ever does lose one, his license is gone.

Life expectancy? Most of that is babies dying when they live in bad places with no medical care. Check out the life expectancy in our own ghettoes.

My class just had it's 50th reunion 10 days ago, and I was shocked to learn how many of my classmates were dying. Two, in our small class of maybe 85, died since November. Lots have had bypasses, take all sorts of meds, really bad shape. Here, we do not expect people to die in their 60's. Usually, if they make it to adulthood, they live well into their 80's. People down the hill are in their 90's, and she is always accusing him of having affairs. And I know a 98 year old man who walks downtown when he needs something.

After I first retired at 55, we walked over the mountains to the next village and back. We left early in the morning and got back after dark, and I was half dead. Now, I can do it in well under 5 hours, and I am 68 years old.

Those countries you mention are indeed good places for wives, in spite of your sarcasm and ignorance. Not only are they better suited for marriage, but as a group, they are much happier when they are married.

Same man; American wife; she's pissed off all the time about SOMETHING. Same man; Colombiana; she's writing home what a wonderful husband she has.

Of course, there is a chance he behaves differently married to a Colombiana. Men do tend to react differently when they are being cussed out 24/7.

Where I disagree with a lot of men, is I don't recommend importing a wife. I recommend exporting yourself. The divorce rate for imported wives is only half what it is for AW, but that is still too high.

> Maybe they got lucky...

Cynicism/Sour grapes. Some people are better at this than you are (and than I am). Graeme McDowell didn't just survive the US Open the other day, he won it. You and I couldn't have done that either, because we're not so well prepared.

> If 50% of first marriages end in
> divorce, and if 70% of those
> divorces were initiated by women...

See yesterday:"I don't CARE who 'initiates most divorces'. I don't CARE if the person who initiated the divorce was the one who misbehaved or just the one who finally needed relief."

And...

> How did it work out for you?

...Just as I don't need to hear about your personal details, I don't see what business mine are to you. If you really, really need to know, shoot me some emails and I'll tell. It won't help you formulate policy. A world that cares so much about me (or you) is lost in triviality. The rest of society has better things to do than make sure that nice little John Smith boy doesn't get entrapped by that scheming Sally Jones girl.

The great thing about Western Civ is that it accepts that people do their best when they're pursuing their own interests.... And we need people to do their best. The finest description of conservatism I ever heard was that the number of exceptions the man on the street is going to make for your special needs is unknown but finite. (See "precious empathy", above.)

To make up for all of the snark I edited out of the preceding comment, consider this & this. (Stealing Mark Lisanti's favorites.)

He added the problem is those good women don't seem to be able to distinguish themselves from bad women so we men can tell the difference until it's too late.

I would rewrite that as: there are men who may have a great deal of difficulty distinguishing good women from bad women... but rather than admit to poor judgment, minimal discernment, and/or being lustfully blinded by superficial jiggling bits, they bitterly grumble and blame the women for not making things clear enough (damn it, they're like identical twins who switch clothes halfway through the day, so now you can't tell the good twin from the evil twin!)

Therefore, his conclusion is that men are better off not taking the risk.
For those men who wouldn't know how to make a good choice, yes they should spare themselves the misery until such time as they are able to make the choice wisely, if ever.

don't bore us with anything that happens to him, because after all it's his fault. Reverse that and see how you like it.

The general message isn't that it's all his fault, only that he has a share in the responsibility too; thinking that you're not responsible for your choices means never learning anything from the consequences. And yes, the commenters here are holding women to that same standard (including women discussing their own poor choices in past relationships).

If I where to go by all the indicators of a bad personality, no women would pass. I suspect the reverse would be true too. Yeah, a lot of guys really should have known better. A number, though I have a hard time faulting.

Then there is also the problem of people changing or being very good at hiding their personality. I have seen this especially common after giving birth. A friend's wife is a good example of this. She was very logical and rational and a career women. She seemed great and I was envious. They had two kids close together. Now she is a nut bag. The kids are not allowed around dogs (or people who have been around dogs unless they use a lint roller first) because dogs have hair which might get in their mouth and they might choke on it. Oh, and she decided she was going to be a SAHM...according to my friend, it was unilateral to cover another topic.

A friend's wife is a good example of this.

The dog thing sounds weird, but hardly something he needs to run screaming into the woods over. As for your friend, no criticism here, since I assume they're still married, so he's finding a way to deal with the aspects of her personality he missed.

>>If he has a good pension, does he care if his neighbors make less? Just because poor kids in the jungle living in grass huts with no doctor within hours, die young, does that mean his kids are going to die young? If he already has a college degree, what does he care about the number who get degrees?

Why are you arguing thus, irlandes?

I didn't say anything about whether you "care" about your poorer, less educated neighbors in Mexico.

My point was the real reason bitter blokes like you flee from America to developing countries to bag culturally docile wives is to make yourselves look like a good catch by contrast.

Then you spend the rest of your lives making spittle-flecked speeches about how all American wives are really dybbuks.

>>And I know a 98 year old man who walks downtown when he needs something.

So fucking what, irlandes?

My husband's 98-year-old uncle also walks everywhere (in leafy Surrey, back in the UK).
Although I have to admit - it's mainly because he's only permitted to drive his Rolls Royce these days under supervision!

"And I will go on the record again as saying that I take responsibility for my part in my divorce. The signs were there. I was just too young and naive to see them." Kristen, I had in mind a post that was going to begin with almost these exact same words. In my case, the first warning sign was actually the real beginning of our relationship. When I met her, she was living in another city and was visiting a friend. We went out a few times during her visit. They were good dates. And then she went back home.

A few months later she knocks on my door. I didn't know she was in town. She told me that she had given up her job in the other city and moved here to be with me. I was impressed, but I also had a little voice in the back of my mind telling me that this was all a little creepy. I wish I had listened to that voice. I recognize now that she was a borderline -- she didn't give up her job and move because she had carefully considered that I was the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. She did it because she had the impulse control of a borderline, which is to say, almost none. I saw other examples of this sort of thing over the next few months, but proceeded with the relationship. Everything after that was inevitable. I won't clog up the thread with the details, but suffice it to say that one thing a borderline cannot stand is to be in any situation where they are not the center of attention.

To answer another question that was asked elsewhere in the thread: did I love her? Yes, there was a time when I did. But that love was based on a willful ignorance. And it was constantly having holes punched in it by her irrational and irresponsible behavior. It gradually devolved into sort of an ego thing -- I held onto her because I didn't want to admit to myself that I had chosen badly, plus I didn't think I would ever be able to do any better (lots of backstory to that bit).

What finally kicked my butt into gear on getting divorced was the discovery that she was forging my signature on credit card applications. No, the fact that she was essentially running a one-woman escort service didn't do it. I don't know if I can explain why, but the forgery felt like more of a dissing than all the rest put together. Strange, isn't it? Anyway, it became too much of a hazard to continue the relationship, so I filed. We had no kids and no significant assets, so it was pretty easy. She was surprised that I filed, but she didn't fight it. I got off lucky there.

nah Crid, I 'dun need to know the particulars, just wanted you to think about it. Like a lot of things, 2 people get hitched, but only one is needed to end it. It isn't possible to know everything about a person you are getting hitched to. Hopefully you know enough. The only point to that really is that, sure sometimes you could have seen the end coming, sometimes only in hindsight, and other times it's a complete surprise. I fail to understand how pointing that idea out, is somehow trying to deflect responsibility.

I have responsibility for the divorce because I initiated it. I have responsibility for the marriage, because I initiated that too. That doesn't relieve my ex- of her responsibility, but only she can take it.

>>Like a lot of things, 2 people get hitched, but only one is needed to end it.

Swiss,
I get your point. But the divorce itself is not like a block of frozen urine falling out of the blue sky from a passing jumbo and suddenly destroying the union...

It is usually the culmination of trouble between two people. (And it is the nature of the beast, when the divorce is a particularly nasty one, that neither side will agree on who first started the trouble...)

like a block of frozen urine falling out of the blue sky from a passing jumbo

Great!

> I fail to understand how pointing that
> idea out, is somehow trying to
> deflect responsibility.

Because it's the vessel for a bunch of complaint about our systems, as if that's where the problem occurred. (There's no reason to care who initiated the break-up if the union was incompetent anyway. The drunk driver's angry because the telephone pole was standing so very close to the road — I think he shouldn't drive drunk.)

The weenies complain about and judges, and law, and policies, and the abstractions of feminism, and ever-broader matters of human nature. In the end, the complaint is that (American) women are too uppity.

So Irlandes moved to the third world where, he's found a life of flattery and comfort. That's fine for him, but flattery and comfort are not what it's about for the country that leads the world, the one which provided him with the muscle which he chooses to leverage in a less challenging culture ("if it's a good doctor the visit is around $12 USD".)

Yeah, absolutely... Life in a America is a mindfucking bitch. It's circuitous and confounding and hurtful, and there's not a single hour of the day untainted by the battles of tomorrow or uncertainty about yesterday's victories. And that includes the women! They'll struggle and squirm and use all their strength (and education and clarity and opportunity and MONEY) to do whatever they fucking well please. When you're in a partnership with an American woman, you're going to be challenged every day of your life.

Is that a problem?

Extra comma... Deep shame.

I think a lot of guys claiming that "men get blamed for everything" are missing the point. No one is saying you deserved what you got, just that you are responsible for your choices- men and women.

I have a male friend who finally broke things off with his psycho ex who would threaten to put him in jail for things he didn't do. She tried to many times, but he kept taking her back! He chose her repeatedly. I also have a female friend who kept taking back her ex when he had shown over and over that he was just using her for sex and money. She, like a lot of commenters, refuses to see her part in creating the mess. Instead she want to cry how he used and abused her and all men are dogs.

If you keep having the same problems with different relationships (men or women) the common denominator is you. Maybe you want to figure what is it about you that makes you attractive/attracted to partners who boo hoo ruin your life.

"bunch of complaint about our systems" Crid.

How do you change a system that is working incorrectly, or not to spec, if you don't complain about it? We are talking 2 different problems there. The first is not marrying well, and we agree whose problem that is. The second is how to dissolve that, and that is the "system" to complain about and change. Unless we should hold that there be no system at all, no marriage, no divorce.

Heh, and Jody, falling blue ice! The horror! Point taken as well.

What I find amusing about this whole argument is that if the majority of men actually took the aforementioned advice, and began avoiding any woman who was even a small risk of doing them over, I doubt very much that men would be congratulated for their good sense. More likely is that people would complain bitterly about men rejecting too many women and opting out.

One wonders whether everyone saying this is really interested in encouraging men to make better choices to begin with, or simply making men take the blame after the fact.

Having said that, I actually agree that men who get involved with women who are vipers should consider their own poor judgment and character failings, not simply see themselves as helpless victims. At the very least, it is always useful to consider how you can make better choices to improve your situation no matter what obstacles you are up against.

> How do you change a system that
> is working incorrectly, or not to spec,
> if you don't complain about it?

I'm running out of ways to say this. Our "system" –though it may suck– is not the point of failure, so I have no energy to fix it. I specifically do not want to make things better for people who marry badly. (Sober drivers aren't offended by telephone poles at the side of the road.)

> You get what you settle for.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Alternate wording: You deserve what you accept... And if you have to force your outcomes, you were never serious about that whole 'liberty' thing anyway.

Y'know, I been thinkin' about this crazy "economic collapse". Over the course of my adulthood, stock and bond investment has crept down through the middle class and sometimes beyond. When you meet someone on the street today, no matter how they're dressed, there's no way to tell whether or not they've got some sophisticated (or at least complicated) assets in a portfolio. "Financial services" has become the largest sector of the American economy.

But financial ingenuity hasn't crept down into the population anywhere near so quickly. People bought into these things presuming, for no good reason, that assets would appreciate no matter how inattentive their investment. They brought no intelligence or insight or effort to the markets at all... They just threw money at them. And now they're upset. They think something went wrong, and they want the President of the United States to make them whole with his imaginary Barackian resources (which are never anything more than their own tax dollars). And he'll be happy to tell them that he's trying to.

So it turns out that even though they say they wanted risk, they didn't really mean it.

This is like that. Weenie-men never concede that they weren't forced to marry these oh-so-horrible women... They wanna talk about "systems".

> the aforementioned advice, and began avoiding
> any woman who was even a small risk

Where is that aforementioned?

We're not saying don't take risks... We've all be hurt by divorces of people we thought were long-term.

What we're saying is know your risk before you're in— such that you don't whine as if the outcomes are our fault rather than your own.

One of the best books of this generation condensed this sensibility into two little words:

No tears.

"Our "system" –though it may suck– is not the point of failure, so I have no energy to fix it. "

Crid, the problem is that the system is taking something that's broke and making it a much worse broke. Law should be held to the same "first, do no harm" principle as the medical profession. In this case at least, it isn't. And the big problem with that is...

"I specifically do not want to make things better for people who marry badly. "

What about their kids? Having seen this system from the underside, I can tell you that it focuses a lot more on picking a winner parent and a loser parent than it does on trying to achieve a best-in-the-situation outcome for the children. Yeah, I know, "think of the children!" is an awful cliche. But this is the one case where it really does apply.

> I can tell you that it focuses a lot more on
> picking a winner parent and a loser parent

EXXAAAAAAACTLY!

So what the fuck do you want? ADULTS are doing this shit! They're doing it to their kids, the very souls on the planet they should be doing their best to shelter. And then they come to us, as if they were children themselves, to have their ouchies kissed.

No.

When slavery was abolished, were plantation owners compensated for their new labor expenses?

(Hi there! You're one of the two or three people who's still reading this thread! You see what's going on with these guys, right? Sure you do. So it's not just me, right? Good. OK, thanks!)

> the system is taking something that's
> broke and...

(Will these evasions never end? Is language the source or the problem, or the consequence?)

Marriage is not "something that's broke". Marriage is doing great! I know a lot of people who have fantastic marriages. And I know a lot of people who have just pretty good ones. Your marriage may be "broke", as mine was, but that's not the same.

And you're the one who broke it. If not, the woman to whom you once publicly swore your dearest allegiance is... If not for your misjudgment (as with mine), everything would be hunky-dory.

Another round of this? Anybody?

OK! Looks like a wrap!

I'm halfway through Liar's Poker myself and am loving it! Can't wait to read The Big Short when I'm done.

I am one of those people who thought my 401K was a magic box that would miraculously grow if I just kept throwing ten percent of what I made into it. The only people who got rich off my 401K were the ones selling it to me.

Oops, oh well. Now I have adjusted my expectations. I paid off my house and have no plans to retire. I may have been a rube about saving, but at least the sunk cost fallacy won't work on me.

Heh, I suppose wrap is a way of saying you don't want to talk anymore, so take care on your way home.

so I'm going to take a different analogy to see if the wind wants to hear it.

You are in an airplane, and something fails. You jump out with a parachute on. When you pull the rip-cord? Instead of a parachute, there is an anvil. Not terribly helpful.

The System called divorce exists IF and Only IF the marriage fails. It doesn't matter WHY it fails, that is an entirely different question. That is the entirely different question where the "Choose Better!" Idea is relevant.

Once the System Called Divorce is engaged, the marriage failed by definition, and the aftermath is what is relevant. This is where you want the parachute and not the anvil. You may break your leg anyway with the parachute, but you might not die. The ONLY reason for this "System" to exist is for after the failure.

Does it make sense to tell a person when the Plane Fails [The System engages] that they shouldn't have gotten on that plane to begin with? We'll file that away for next time, if it ever happens. I'll tell my friends, certainly my children, but that isn't the reason The System exists. It is there to deal with the failure.

Since that failure can be for various reasons, various people, you want The System to be useful for all those failure modes as much as possible. [Especially when children are involved, you want it to work every time.]

Nobody forces you to get on a plane or wear a parachute, but if you put it on, you are expecting it to work.

Crid, you pulled the rip-cord and got a parachute, walked away from the crash. But you are telling everyone else that they have no right to anticipate the same, and that you are too tired to care if it is so. That's mighty convenient.

Handy conversion chart! Slips conveniently into wallet or purse! —


"the ones selling it to me" = "largest sector of the American economy"


(Me too, Angel... me too.)

Crid, you will get a huge kick out of a comment I read over on James Quinn's site:

"I am, apparently, much smarter than Michael Lewis in that I concluded that the Liar’s Poker economy was all a big scam and steered well clear of it from the beginning. This spared me the hassle of accumulating big piles of easy money and the trouble having access to scads of gorgeous female sex partners. Thank God for that. The fact that my incompetent college buddy who’s worked for about every corrupt company on the planet (except for BP – which he’s going to be pissed about slipping by him) routinely gets severance packages that are larger than my entire life’s earnings comforts me as I hand-wash my ziplok baggies for re-use."

Thread win if I ever saw one.

More evasion! So you DO want another round, after all!

> You are in an airplane

No you're not. You're in a marriage. The analogy doesn't apply.

Science, industry and western governments, most notably that of the United States, have spent the past century turning air travel into a convenient, reliable, and essentially safe consumer experience. NOBODY promises carefree transit in marriage, or certifies anyone else as fit for service. Even Einstein made jokes about it, as do captains of industry and politicians.

(By the way, did you hear about Al Gore's big weekend in Oregon?)

But that's where your head's at, right?... You so badly want personal validation of your grievance. But the problem isn't flying and the problem isn't divorce, the problem is marrying the wrong woman.

> you pulled the rip-cord and got
> a parachute, walked away from
> the crash.

No, I crashed hard, but decided not to be an asshole about it to other people. They'd have asked why I didn't notice the hole in the wing and the cracked cockpit window and the rusty slats and the flat tires... What makes you think my divorce, or anyone else's, wasn't as unpleasant as yours? Are you really going to insist that the rest of us drop what we're doing and tell you your pain is special? Is that the function of society for you? Is that why you think we're here?

> you are telling everyone else
> that they have no right to
> anticipate the same

Huh? I'm INSISTING that people anticipate failure. Especially when they make kids... The stakes are incredibly high.

Cousin Dave,
Your story resonates with me bc my brother in law just married some crazy bitch he met off the internet. They met and within two weeks she brought over her kids and had them calling him daddy shortly thereafter. The vacation cruise she talked him into shortly after meeting him turned into a honeymoon cruise 6 months later. After 4 months, she had moved in with him and quit her teaching job. Quick, quick, quick. She made no attempt to meet his family or even be remotely pleasant during their white trash wedding.

We (his family) are just sick over this and sense nothing but impending doom. However, at the end of the day this was his choice to make and he purposely avoided hearing any one who could provide him with feedback. You see, it was just easier to let her drive the cart than to go and do the hard work of improving himself so someone decent would want him.

Now, I ask you... how sorry for him should I feel when she takes his house, his money and those poor kids that he does truely love?

No, I crashed hard, but decided not to be an asshole about it to other people.

A lesson in life, that. And it applies to more than just marriage. I had a problem a few years back with school. I was suffering from both depression and anxiety (each had effects on the other), based mostly on my own fears (I found out at a later date). I attempted to finish my degree on three occasions, but I kept crashing and burning. You know what I found out? It was my own damn fault. I could blame my parents and my high school and society's expectations all I wanted, but the fact is that I was the one making the continual decision not to go to class or finish my papers. My decision alone. And once those decisions start, they just keeps getting easier, so it went on for a long time until I finally quit to get my head on straight. After working for three years (well, two and unemployed for most of the last one), I'm going back in about three weeks. And I'm sure I'll handle it much better this time because I realized that no one owes me anything and it's up to me to do it. And if I don't, then I have no right to be an asshole to anyone else. And that's my decision, too, because it's just as easy to not be that way. It's all about choice.

> A lesson in life, that.

This shouldn't turn into confessional for anyone... that's the point. But for the record, I was probably rude to several people over the next few years, though assigning responsibility to others was not possible. Never been forced to get on an airplane, either.

> "I am, apparently, much smarter than Michael Lewis
> in that I concluded that the Liar’s Poker economy
> was all a big scam and steered well clear of it from
> the beginning.

A great thing about the book is that Lewis conveys that he was just visiting that realm, even though he managed to pull a substantial sum of money out of his work at Salomon. He seems to have known that the real treasure was going the be the book he'd write about it... Which is a pretty impressive display of confidence for a writer in his mid-20's with a slender portfolio of magazine pieces.

Re: Big short-
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/program/292621-1

And what things will convince both people to keep dancing instead of one walking away because it's easy

First of all, marriage is a financial arrangement; always was if you read about its history. And all you have to do is get divorced to understand this; the courts couldn't care less about who loved whom more and who made the chicken soup when the other one got sick. All that matters is who gets what.

It's when we started marrying for love — and can anyone define what love means? Exactly — that we got in trouble and put so many expectations on it that it almost seems doomed from the start.

Unless you're "lucky" by marrying someone who's a good fit. But it's not luck, it's a number of factors that require you to be truly present and self-aware in the relationship before you get down on one knee. And then marriage takes, not "work," but connection and communication and flexibility and genuine kindness. And, you know, laughing together.

Too many people get married for the wrong reasons, including living together first, which I'm against. It puts you in a marriage-like situation that often morphs into marriage because "we've been living together for so long, we might as well." No, sorry, not a good reason!

I once asked a couple who were both, uh, big in the porn business, how they made their marriage work. I mean, think about it! Maybe we all need to follow their advice on
what to say 'I do' to.

Thank god for my Paraguayan girlfriend. Because of her I don't have to put up with all of this stupid crap from American women. She thinks all american women are crazy psychos.

Guys, don't try to rationalize any of this. Marriage in this country will never work unless they get rid of no-fault divorce and quit rewarding women to get divorced. Make equal shared parenting automatic except for the usual opt outs (abuse, unfit)...that will drop the divorce rate too, if women know they won't automatically get the kids (and the child support money).

"Huh? I'm INSISTING that people anticipate failure. Especially when they make kids... The stakes are incredibly high." Crid

Anticipation of failure takes on the form of avoidance or mitigation. Avoidance is better. On that we agree. Are you arguing against mitigation, or just not want to talk about it? :shrug:

I read another advice columnist who repeatedly says that before you make any kind of serious committment to another person, you need to think about how that person would behave in a break-up. (And this isn't like magic either, you can predict based on what you know. If you don't know enough, it's too soon.) If they'd make your life miserable GET OUT NOW.

> Avoidance is better. On that we agree.

Why should anyone think so? You've said nothing about avoidance, and never conceded Monica's point that family courts and the society which pays for them (to say nothing about the children) are being forced into an untenable position, managing or suffering losses which cannot be made whole.

Pilots who take seriously the "avoidance" of flying into mountainsides review the physics of the flight before takeoff and specifically avoid drinking and drowsing. When the shit does hit the fan, they never, ever complain about the color of the parachutes on the other guy's aircraft... They were the ones who'd promised safe conduct, after all.

It may be an apocryphal story... It's probably too good to be true. But I remember a tale that when Sully's plane had gone down in the Hudson, he made a sweep of the entire (waist-deep) cabin to make sure everyone was on the rescue boats. And then someone, a younger person (can't remember whether it was crew or a passenger) offered to go back and confirm that the plane was empty. And Sully said to him: "Get off my aircraft", and did a final check for himself, wading again through January water on 57-year-old knees. His thoughts were not with his airline, the regulating agencies, or his union.

Folklore like that speaks to thousands of years of human travel over dangerous shoals. Whether it's a 12th century cog full of slaves or 21st century spacecraft full of PhD's, everyone understands that transportation works best when some senior is indisputably responsible, someone who won't whine that this weather was unexpected.

Do you really, really think this is less the case for families? Less data to draw from? Less obvious precedent? Too much for an infant to expect of the ones who brought him here?

":shrug:" my balls.