Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person

This was in Sunday’s NYT and I thought it interesting reading. Some of the comments thought it was pessimistic but I thought it has a lot of truth in it and was more pragmatic than pessimistic. Would love to hear others’ thoughts!

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/why-you-will-marry-the-wrong-person.html?mwrsm=Facebook

Here are a choice bit from the article but its worth a read through as it isn’t lengthy at all.
“Partly, it’s because we have a bewildering array of problems that emerge when we try to get close to others. We seem normal only to those who don’t know us very well. In a wiser, more self-aware society than our own, a standard question on any early dinner date would be: “And how are you crazy?””

I suggest reading the whole article for more nuance and detail.

As someone just sticking a toe back into the dating pool, this makes me want to retreat to the couch with a book instead. :frowning:

Life isn’t a Disney movie. :wink:

I think an emphasis on finding a nice and caring person who can communicate, whose faults you can live, with is more reasonable and practical than setting out for that “perfect” match or soulmate. One would think the former is easier to find than the latter, @intparent, or at least bound to be more realistic and satisfying for my practical mind.

My advice is to find someone you are attracted to and can be best friends with and work with each other’s faults.

Not what the article is about, but my preference is to be friends first, then date if that works well. I am honestly completely thrown when someone I barely know asks me on a date. But that is an aside to this thread, I think. :slight_smile:

This article reminded me about dropping the ridiculous concept of “finding your soulmate” or “the one”. Find someone reasonably compatible, with an ability for compromise and mutual respect - add that to an underlying friendship and you are on your way. And I say this as someone weeks away from 27 years of a good marriage.

I liked this part in particular:

I’m with you, @rockvillemom, being weeks away from 30 years of marriage. Like all marriages, we have our moments, but I feel lucky to have married the person I did. He’s my best bud and, first and foremost, a good person!

I love Alain de Botton! He is such a wonderful stylist. I agree with his sentiment but I think most people already understand this. I personally am much more surprised by the couples who, 30 years later, still seem to be perfect soul mates who are madly in love than by the average everyday couples that just seem to be together because they’ve always been together.

I guess it’s a good thing that I can’t relate to this article at all?

Mr R knew all about my crazy before we married (and I knew his). Living together for several years and going through multiple severe illnesses makes it kinda hard to hide :wink:

The article seems a bit outdated to me.

Most of the younger married couples I know had a well-established relationship for years before they got married – often sharing an apartment for at least part of that time. By the time they actually marry, they are long past the initial period of lust-mania, and they know each others’ flaws pretty well.

Our generation, on the other hand, seemed more impulsive.

On the issue of hiding (per romani), it has seemed to me that sometimes one has put up such an effort to be who the other may most seem to want one to be, that at the end of the day, after the marriage and headiness of it all has faded, one has not presented one’s self truthfully.

The article is rather sobering ,and, yes, Marian, seems out of sync with how young people are now forming the marriage relationship. Perhaps they are revealing more to each other, even in the times when there are the unspoken moments which also are quite telling.

I was actually saddened by this, " Recklessness is taken as a counterweight to all the errors of reason, that catalyst of misery, that accountant’s demand." I am sure I will sleep on it, and take it with me into my days this week.

The following almost seems a rewording of the old idea that we marry one of our parents, even as we think we are rejecting the particular modes in which they expressed (or did not express) love :

“How logical, then, that we should as grown-ups find ourselves rejecting certain candidates for marriage not because they are wrong but because they are too right — too balanced, mature, understanding and reliable — given that in our hearts, such rightness feels foreign. We marry the wrong people because we don’t associate being loved with feeling happy.”

My mother was an adherent of the idea that success creates happiness. I think she and I had different ideas of success, of course.

Each time I try to figure out how in the heck this guy has grown to be the repository of memories I share, memories of me growing fat in the belly with child, me looking sexier than ever after the birth of a child, a great storm, an incredible film, grief at the loss of a loved one - I think, ‘How in the heck is this the person who represents the other part of me?’

And I remember that everything we see at the end was also present in the beginning, and it just sends me into a quiet, wishful introspection that never really resolves the feelings of angst, but gives me a less self-centered prism through which to view him, and my choices in staying.

Beautifullyexpressed, @Waiting2exhale. If the part you quote is true, at least for many of us, how important it is to raise our children in a loving and healthy environment so baggage isn’t carried forward!

I agree, @Marian, that some of it would seem dated, yet marriages and relationships continue to fail, even amongst the younger generation. Many still rush into things and many don’t cohabitate before marriage (my husband and I did for 3 years before marriage 3 decades ago so it wasn’t novel even then). Sometimes we don’t know the other person for years. Heck, we don’t even know ourselves! Or we know their faults but won’t accept them. Or we know them and one or both don’t know how to be accepting and kind. Or selfishness…or something.

The vast majority of people do cohabitate before marriage though. And the divorce rate has been declining since the late 70s/early 80s.

Like Marian, I really wonder who this is written to since it seems very out of step with the experiences of “millenials” (though I hate categorizing us as a monolithic group).

Yes, marriages still fail but I don’t think it’s because we didn’t know about the flaws of ourselves/our partners or because we rushed into marriage.

That’s valid but one doesn’t have to look at it only in the context of marriage and divorce but also in the context of why any relationship breaks up after a given point.

H and I did not rush and we lived together before marriage. It was years. However, honestly I often think I married the wrong person. We have been married for over 30 years. Sometimes it is good, others not so much. I know this is normal for most marriages.

But I really do know we do not have the best personalities for each other. We spend a lot of time together and accept each other’s flaws while at the same time not liking some of them. I guess we depend on each other. We are both very difficult people to like. hahahaha He is negative, grumpy and know-it -all. I am lazy, needy and insecure. Great combo, right?

My relationship reminds me of the Fiddler on the Roof song “Do You Love Me?” except I didn’t do all that washing.

I’m finalizing a divorce after many years of struggle and at the beginning of a rekindled relationship and this article has been hard to stop thinking about since I read it. Multi- decade relationships have such complexity and it’s about dynamics as much as personalities. Maybe I’ll have something to add later. I appreciate all the thoughtful comments.

I have to say, the contemplative state this article and thread put me in proved to be the very state I needed to be in today. Much as @rom828, I appreciate the comments as well.

Can’t relate at all. We’re going on 28 years of marriage and my guy is still my soul mate. We absolutely love doing things together whether at home or traveling. It’s what brought us together in the first place.

I’ve told my boys to find their significant other by enjoying doing things together - not lust.

I found the comments more thought-provoking than the essay. Many are eloquent, some are beautiful, others are heartbreaking.

I was in a relationship with somebody who went from a super loving caring tolerant woman to a cold withdrawn person in a couple of weeks time. anger and resentment and coldness became the dominant part of her personality. it was scary how fast someone can change. everyone she cared about got tossed to the side. I was glad that i was not married for 30-40 years and at that point all but co-dependent when it happened…or a rebound at that age would have been extremely difficult for me. ( even at a young age where I still could change course and start again was a very difficult time full of angst and sadness)

My wife and I followed the friends-first path, then lived together (and lived separately) for several years before getting married. And we still had some rocky times, especially when our children were very young. Despite having almost completely identical values around child-rearing and education, the different challenges children brought also highlighted differences in our personalities that we had long before learned to negotiate in other contexts, but not that one. Plus, over the years, this or that aspect of our personalities emerged more clearly, and they weren’t always the favorites of the other partner.

Which is to say, I guess, that I agree with the article’s basic premise, and don’t think it’s irrelevant in a world where cohabitation before marriage is the norm.

Both of my kids are in apparently stable, long-term relationships. One is engaged, the other all but. Both are moving in with their SOs in the next few weeks. One couple followed the parents’ path – college friends who started dating years after their relationship began. The other met via OK Cupid, and have been exclusive since about a week after their first date. Guess which couple seems more natural, more comfortable, and worries the parents least? It’s not the longtime friends!