@albert69 there is nothing wrong with using this as a guide for picking dating partners. In fact, it’s probably a good idea.
Another thing to consider is how each person expects his/her partner to behave after they are married or after they have children. Do those expectations differ from the expectations they have as a dating couple (or even an unmarried couple living together)?
It’s worth talking about these things if you can anticipate them.
For example, a woman might feel very strongly that she wants to put her career on hold for a few years to be a stay-at-home parent when her children are born. But her husband might expect that both of them will continue to work full-time except for brief parental leaves. Unless they talk about it, they might not realize that they have such different expectations.
Even much smaller issues can cause difficulties – issues that you would never think to discuss before marriage. For example, a major issue for my husband and me was that he felt (and still feels, very strongly) that parents should never help their children with their homework. He feels that children should be responsible for it entirely on their own. I disagree. The compromise we eventually settled on was that I could help our kids with their homework if I thought it was appropriate, but he never would. Neither of us felt this was really satisfactory, and it was a source of tension for us from the time when our oldest started kindergarten until the time when our youngest graduated from high school.
General comment - Many matches work better when there is fairly comfortable finances. For example, if spouse disagree on priorities it is a smaller issue when an “extra expense” does not cause family budget crunch.
These days, students with steep student loans bring an extra stress-factor to the relationship. It wasn’t until we got our kids mostly through college (minimal loans) that I realized they might eventually marry into a situation with spouse loans. I suppose it is better than both having loans, but it does concern me.
When will a couple likely start to comfortably talk about this seemingly unromantic topic: How big is your student loans?
I don’t know, but sometimes I feel that, in the Internet age, if there is a web site from which a person could look up the credit score and the size of the debt (with some mechanism in place to prevent total strangers from accessing the private info), it may be fare to both parties so that they can decide early on whether they want to start or continue their relationship so that it will not be too late for either of them to back out. Why do the government agency or even the loan company or credit card company may access this info easily but two people who may be so intertwined in their life in their future can not access the same information so readily.
For example, for an online dating company, there is a requirement that this info should be submitted and verified, and there is some “protocol” for two members to access each other’s info with mutual agreement before they date each other. This could make sure who say what he/she is is really what he/she really is.
The financial aid office at college or Sally Mae may also facilitate this kind of information exchange (with some secured protocol agreed between related student members.)
Some may say this invades the privacy. But I would say this promotes the honesty and being fare to every potential suitor in the dating market.
Does my imagination run away?!
- Sometimes I feel that if there is a web site from which a person could look up the credit score and the size of the debt, it may be fare to both potential partners to decide whether they want to continue *
According to the media, some people hire private detectives to research their prospective partners, but if your relationship is serious, you should be comfortable discussing serious matters.
But otherwise too stalkery, to look up someone else’s private info.
It really amazes me that many of these discussions don’t come up before marriage. I just can’t imagine not talking about what your plans are post-marriage or when kids arrive etc.
I knew a couple that apparently was so not on the same page that she was planning on adopting a dog right away after marriage and didn’t know that he HATED dogs.
About being able to on the same page, is it good in general for two people to know each other quite well as close friends during a relatively long period of multiple years before they start to date as love interests?
Of course, being close friends is very different than being in a relationship. The expectations could be very different. Also, I keep hearing the term: “being friend-zoned” – it is as if you become a friend first and stay as friends for slightly too long and you may be stuck on the pure friendship ladder and will likely not be able to switch to the romantic partner ladder forever.
I mean it can’t hurt.
“Friend-zone” isn’t a real thing. It’s (generally) based on the presumption that you’re a male and thus all women should want to date you. If, for whatever reason, a female isn’t interested in you it’s because you’re “friend-zoned” and clearly that means she’s done something wrong… because why wouldn’t every straight or bi female want to date you? 8-|
It’s not necessary to be friends beforehand IMO. I was friends with my partner for about a year and a half before we started dating but I don’t think it made a lick of difference.
My mother said she knew my husband was a keeper when he kept his cool during a visit to our winter cabin where we were all in close quarters, my Dad got the stomach flu and various other members of the party got rather short-tempered. We’ve been married 30+ years. I think being friends, having some common interests (crosswords, hiking, reading and watching sci-fi and fantasy), and not expecting perfection all help. We have very similar backgrounds and pretty similar attitudes about religion and politics. We were a couple for seven years before we got married, though, three of them were on opposite coasts and one I was traveling across the country on a grant.
Re:" It’s (generally) based on the presumption that you’re a male and thus all women should want to date you. If, for whatever reason, a female isn’t interested in you it’s because you’re “friend-zoned” "
So in the modern world, is it still more common for a male expresses his love interest first, and, in response to the initiation, the female decides not-go (friend-zone him) or go (accept his initiation)?
I think it may be still be case today, except that the parents generally are more prohibited to “intervene”. Maybe the cultural norm in many cultures is that it is now more acceptable for females to send out the “signal” as they desire; this is essentially equivalent to the initiation of a relationship from her end, albeit it may be in a more “subtle” (likely more “civil”) way. This may be due to the fact that the social norm is still not advanced as fast as it needs to be. Maybe someday both sexes will initiate in the same way.
Thanks to the inputs. I found that some of the ideas here may be useful to us (to help improve our “40+ years” relationship - even though it is not that our relationship will break down any time soon.)
It is still more common (in a hetero relationship) for the male to ask and female to say yes or no- NOT friend zone. It is a stupid term created by insecure men who feel that they are god’s gift to women.
It’s certainly not the only way. I asked out both my long-term partners. Many women feel just as empowered as men do- especially when their potential partner is the more shy one in the relationship 
Ability to listen well, without being judgmental.
Your last paragraph made me think of, god forbidden that I mentioned this again, that my wife said DS seems to wait for the other side to ask first - i.e., using your term, he is not “empowered” by his own choice (maybe due to his heightened insecurity?)
I said “god forbidden”, it is because every time I happen to mention his case, it seems I “got into a trouble for myself” here. LOL.
Re: “Ability to listen well”
I think I could make more use of this. Thanks.
I think it is communication, communication, communication. After that, I think it is important to have similar values, the same thoughts about having/not having children, respect and kindness, and family support. My sibs (4) and I are all still married - 30 to 44 years! Having ‘enough’ money helps, too.
^^^agree^^^ and being “nice-respectful” to each other: “Thank you for doing the dishes for me., That was kind of you. Can you do me a favor and get some Milk at the 7/11-I forgot to get it at the store”, etc.
I honestly don’t t think that living together is an important factor for a strong marriage. In my extended family, none of us lived with our spouses before we married and all of us have solid marriage of 5-60+ years duration. Communication and shared values and mutual respect are very important, I’d say.
Formal education levels don’t have to be identical, but it’s helpful if both people in marriage are comfortable with the friends and family of their partner–its not pleasant and not good to have to choose partner vs. friends and/or family.
Folks I know who have divorced have often had lack of mutual respect that led them to grow apart. The wives wanted to be treated more as equals and wanted the spouses to share more in the childrearing and household tasks and often the husbands would not agree. Sadly, many of the kids of the divorce spend much more time with their dads AFTER the divorce than during the marriage. Often the Hs remarried but I don’t believe the divorce was CAUSED by the other woman. None of the women I know who divorced have remarried.
I am one of those religious prudes who thinks fornication is wrong, so I wouldn’t live with someone before I married them. Of course, the marriage laws are so flexible that it’s not like marriage is any guarantee of anything, it’s not like you need a reason to divorce someone nowadays. I think it used to be that people could only get divorced for a reason, like adultery, abuse, etc.
For some, living together before is important. For others, it’s not. Nearly everyone in my family (going back at least a century) lived together (and most had children) before marriage. This includes at least as far back as my great-grandparents on one side. Worked for them. I would never marry someone I didn’t live with beforehand. Personal preference.
@albert69 you are right in that “divorce” rates are much higher now than in the past (pre-70s). However, as the divorce reasons were much more strict back then, people didn’t get divorced but desertion rates (primarily by men) were very high.
Personally, I prefer the divorce laws we have now. At least now when a spouse “abandons” or divorces the other can move on with his/her life and force the other to at least maintain some financial responsibility for their offspring.
Abuse was very rarely grounds for divorce. Women were considered property of men and to divorce, the woman would have to show cruel bodily harm and would not retain rights over her children. Divorce in cases of abuse was generally worse for the woman than staying in the abusive relationship unless she was at risk of dying.
In some states, the auto insurance is the “no-fault” insurance, meaning that when there is an accident in which two parties are involved, none of them are considered as at fault for the insurance purpose.
Does the divorce nowadays have the similar characteristics in that when there is a divorce, we do not even want to know who is at fault. Both sides agree that let us not try to find out who is at fault. We just want to go separate ways starting from a certain day.
BTW, how can we divide the responsibility of paying off the loans we had borrowed for the big wedding not long ago? We have not paid off that big loan yet. The credit record is still important because each of us may still need to rely on a good credit to purchase the next house in the future when each of us marries with someone else.