[ SECRET POST #1558 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #1558 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 12 pages, 291 secrets from Secret Submission Post #223.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 3 - too big ], [ 1 - repeat ], [ 1 - take it to comments ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[hikari87.livejournal.com]

"Just because they're getting married at all"? Wrong. Just because they're going into marriage with unrealistic expectations and the mindset that hey, if it's not as fun as we think it'll be, we'll just split up. Just because they don't have the commitment to each other to last through the hard times. Just because they don't view marriage as something that should be permanent, or that's going to be hard work, or that's really any different than just living together to save money on the rent. Breakups happen whether you're married or not. But when you've promised to be together for the rest of your life, and yet believe that as soon as things get tough you can just toss it all away like it was nothing, that's when it doesn't work, regardless of whether you've had a legal wedding or not.

[lljscrawls.livejournal.com]

Uh, no, not wrong. Getting legally married = the chance that it's going to end in divorce. To counter each of your reasons:

"they're going into marriage with unrealistic expectations and the mindset that hey, if it's not as fun as we think it'll be, we'll just split up" -- Uh, no, actually. I'm twenty, about to be twenty-one, and many of the people I went to high school with have gotten engaged/married recently. I know this because of Facebook, and through Facebook I've seen the wishes/desires that they have for it to last for life. Most people don't get married because they think it'll be "lol easy" for them to split up again. After all, the most commonly used wedding vows are 'till death do us part.'

And actually, the entire rest of your post just repeats the same argument, so I won't even bother to break that down.

Look. It has nothing to do with immaturity, or a desire for it not to last. Yes, immaturity can lead to hasty decisions which can lead to divorce, but what I'm saying is that doesn't matter. Sometimes -- most of the time, even! -- people just find that they aren't as compatible as they thought they were for whatever reason. Look at my biological parents, whom I used in an example in my original post. They got married young, yes. Their marriage lasted for twenty-two bloody years, which is an awfully long time (to put it into perspective, they got married back in the 70s, when they were in their very early twenties; they got divorced in the mid-90s, when they were in their mid-forties). They had two children (my sister, older than me by eight and a half years, and myself), and believe me when I say they went through a rash of hard times together. They tried counseling. They tried talking. They did a helluva a lot of fighting. It just didn't work out.

Marriage is an institution created by human beings in an attempt to make their individual relationships seem like something special and sacred, but when you get right down to it, all it is is a piece of paper (a legally binding one, at that), a pair of shiny rings, some tax benefits and a wealth of money usually wasted on a ridiculously grandiose ceremony. That's it. If people want that to feel special, go ahead, but the fact remains that most marriages end in divorce -- not because the people are "too immature," or "don't understand the commitment," or "aren't willing to put in the work," but simply because people change as they grow older, and while some people change together and stay compatible, others grow apart. You're never done maturing, you're never done growing and learning, and because of that it's ridiculous to think that you'll be the same person at 45 as you were at 21, or the same person at 67 that you were at 45.

To be honest, while I may sound cynical and jaded, I think you sound rather judgmental and naive. No amount of "work" can make two people who have fallen out of love/like-like/attraction/what-have-you keep up a successful marriage, and just because a marriage falls apart DOES NOT MEAN that it was because the two people in the marriage "didn't try," or that they see the relationship as "nothing."

But I still think that just forsaking the overly-expensive, pointless (in the end, because it SHOULD NOT be the stupid rings and legal contract that make your relationship mean something, but rather, the relationship itself) ceremony and just being together for however long it lasts is a better solution, anyway.

[hikari87.livejournal.com]

A desire to be together forever doesn't mean much. A decision to be together forever does. It's a decision that the couple is going to have to make over and over, every day, even when they don't feel that desire. The thing is this. If you have sworn to be together forever, then you are bound by your word to do just that. Granted there are times when divorce really is your only option. But the view that marriage, or indeed any romantic partnership, should be based on feelings alone, is, to my mind, a contributing factor to the rate of people splitting up. Love isn't a feeling. Love is a conscious decision to put the other person's greater good and happiness ahead of your own. Feelings of love exist, and they're wonderful, but they are a very shaky basis to rest a relationship on alone. They might be what brings you together, but they are not going to be what keeps you together. What keeps you together is that decision that you ARE going to stay a pair, no matter how hard things get. Again, I am NOT saying that there are never times when divorce is the only decent option. I am saying that there WILL be times when one or both partners are going to partly or totally lose those romantic feelings, but that in and of itself is not a reason to say goodbye permanently. I am not saying that your parents just didn't work hard enough. I have seen bad things happen in my own parents marriage, where I sometimes thought that divorce might have been a good solution, but they had already made the decision that they were not going to leave each other even if things were bad between them, and they didn't, and they were able to get through it. I have seen it happen both in this way and when it ended in divorce. I am not as naive as you seem to think. I DO NOT believe that marriage or partnership is going to necessarily lead to constant happiness. I also do not believe that becoming unhappy in a marriage or partnership means that you should necessarily split up, because 1) people change and can grow together as they have grown apart, and can mend their relationship again and b) if you gave your word to stay together, you should honor that word. I will tell you that I would not trust myself to stay with someone forever if I had not made that vow with them (I'm not with anyone at the moment), and neither would I trust that person to stay with me without that vow. Because we would have given our word of honor to stay together forever, we would be duty-bound to honor that commitment, and therefore would have no option but to find a way, no matter how hard, to make it work, UNLESS one of us did something unforgivable. I realize this sounds like I'm advocating misery and accusing people who get divorced for any reason of generally being bad people, but I'm not. I do believe that sometimes divorce is your only option. Your parents sound like they did their best to work things out, but divorce ended up being their only option. BUT. it should be a VERY LAST option, only after you have tried everything, EVERYTHING else that you possibly can, to hold your relationship together. Btw, what I have said regarding splitting up of legally married couple holds for couples who haven't gotten married too. The difference between a marriage and a couple living together, and the reason that divorce is worse than simply breaking up with your live-in? Because you haven't given your word of honor to stay with your live-in forever. A vow means something. THAT is what makes marriage different from living together. Not the rings. Not the license. Not the fancy dress and suit, standing in a church. The formally swearing to be together forever.

[hikari87.livejournal.com]

Ahem, sorry for the long post, didn't realize how long it had gotten.

[(Anonymous)]

First of all, the current divorce rate is actually now the lowest it's been since the 70s. It's not above 50%; it's at 36%. There is some speculation that this may be in large part due to the recession, and that the divorce rate could jump once the economy has fully stabilized. Nonetheless, the divorce rate hasn't actually been over 50% since the 80s. During the past 20 years, it's been bouncing around between 40% and 50%.

Now, as far as your parents go, while they may have been married for 22 years, they're still among those who married young. Contrary to what you seem to believe, that does play a significant role in whether or not a couple will ultimately get divorced. The majority of people who divorce (two thirds, in fact) were married at age 24 or younger. The older you are when you marry, the less likely you are to split (with those 35+ being the least likely. Last I read I think they accounted for about 5% of divorces) -- and that's probably due to the fact that, by the time you're middle aged, you've pretty much figured out who you are and what you want (not that there aren't exceptions, of course, what with that good ol' mid-life crisis that crops up for some people).

And that's the key thing: yes, we always keep growing and learning, but the pace of that growth slows as we get older. Our identities stabilize, and our values and viewpoints become firm and grow increasingly difficult to shake. Did you know that, by age 27, your ability to learn new things and entertain new ideas starts to decline unless you take very active steps to stop it? It's part of why people seem to get more stubborn as they get older. And that stubbornness, that immutability, is actually helpful in marriage.

So, it's not about immaturity, by any means. But it is about being too young to fully know yourself and what you want. And while not everyone goes into marriage thinking it will be rainbows and sunshine all of the time, a lot of people, particularly young people, have a very unrealistic idea of what it will be like. It's not that they don't want to be with the other person forever, and it's not that they don't want to work at the relationship; it's that they think that marriage will magically make certain things better and, paradoxically, it's that they think marriage is less likely to end than other kinds of relationships. As a result, they don't take the time to sit down and consider whether they really should be getting married. The example I'll give is that of my cousin. His SO clearly had problems with the relationship, and wanted him to change. She didn't bring any of that up, however, until they'd already gone and gotten married. She thought that, since marriage is "permanent," that he would have to change and that things would have to get better. Needless to say, they were divorced within a year. People who approach marriage with realistic expectations start with a much better hand -- and a lot of times, it takes the process of living adult life to develop those expectations.

Marriage isn't for everyone, and no one should feel like they have to get married. But marriage also isn't destined to fail, and there are ways to decrease the likelihood that one will be divorced.

Something else I did want to comment on: marriage as a construct isn't about people feeling special; it's about property, economics, and the need for society to control familial relationships. Why do you think some cultures allow polygamy? It's not because they're perverted; it's because some purpose in that society is served through the practice. For example, among Tibetan highlanders, it's traditional for a woman to marry a group of brothers. The reason for this is that, in that area, there's very little arable land, and if such land were to be divided among an owner's heirs, the people would literally run out at some point. Their marriage tradition allows them to avoid the division of property and the attendant problems that would arise as a result (in modern times, this practice has been declining, for various reasons).

[hikari87.livejournal.com]

+100 and many many internet cookies

[childings.livejournal.com]

Something else I did want to comment on: marriage as a construct isn't about people feeling special; it's about property, economics, and the need for society to control familial relationships.

GOD, THANK YOU FOR THIS
I am so sick of everyone's cynical attitude towards [hetero] marriage. I'm not going to get fucking divorced, probably because I have a completely different idea of marriage than your standard, antiquated, limited view of the institution. My romantic relationship with my spouse is completely removed from our marriage. Marriage is just a piece of paper that signifies to the rest of the world that you are a family unit, nothing more