Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person

This was posted to HN when it was new. (This is non-judgemental)<p>Link to the discussion: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11809381" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11809381</a>

Interesting conclusion. I agree that we need to let go of the notion that there is someone &quot;perfect&quot; for us. That person doesn&#x27;t exist. True, lasting happiness in marriage is possible. Joy in marriage occurs when we seek the highest good of the other through unselfish sacrifice and compromise, and the other does the same toward us. That isn&#x27;t easy, and could take years of discipline and failure. I&#x27;ve seen couples that I knew were heading for divorce grasp this and are now the happiest people I know. Of course, sometimes divorce is inevitable, but I think some could be avoided if each recommitted themselves to the higher good of the other.

My dad, who is divorced, tried to sum up his marriage advice for me: &quot;Marriage can work if each person is willing to contribute more than half to the relationship.&quot;<p>Now that I&#x27;m married with three kids (one a teenager), I think he might actually have been on to something. Life isn&#x27;t fair, things probably won&#x27;t even out in the end, and nobody will ever fully appreciate the thousand invisible things you do to make your family work. If your belief system expects the opposite of those statements to be true, then you might not allow yourself the emotional slack to buffer the incredible variance of a marriage that lasts long enough to cover the normal trials of real life (illness, death, job change, envy, jealousy, in-laws, travel, aging, boredom, financial trouble, etc.).

<i>&quot;The person who is best suited to us is not the person who shares our every taste...but the person who can negotiate differences in taste intelligently&quot;</i><p>I do agree with this bit. It&#x27;s confusing to me that many of the online dating sites are trying to pair people based on how alike they are.<p>Is there any real research that this is somehow the key to marital bliss? Anecdotal, but most of the long married couples I know aren&#x27;t very alike, and don&#x27;t share the same interests...other than things like grandchildren, etc.

&gt; The marriage of reason was not, in hindsight, reasonable at all; it was often expedient, narrow-minded, snobbish and exploitative.<p>Is this actually true? I&#x27;ve heard it repeated over and over again, but is there any real evidence that a larger percentage people in &quot;marriages of reason&quot; felt dissatisfied when compared to marriages today? Considering the 50% divorce rate I&#x27;d be extremely surprised if the dissatisfaction rate of matches made in days gone by was much higher.

The lead image for the article contains deeper insight into the state of modern marriage than all the words following.

I&#x27;ve successfully applied the following simplified criterion &quot;am I likely to still enjoy this person&#x27;s company when I&#x27;m 80&quot;

&gt;<i>And from such reasonable marriages, there flowed loneliness, infidelity, abuse, hardness of heart and screams heard through the nursery doors.</i><p>That&#x27;s not a historically accurate description. In some cases it lead to that (but so did the &quot;modern&quot; idea of marriage as based on passion). It also lead to countless totally normal and stable marriages.<p>People weren&#x27;t even unhappy about not marrying someone they are passionate about, because that was not in the &quot;idea horizon&quot;. You don&#x27;t miss what you don&#x27;t expect.<p>Ask Indian people (that have not been westernized) for their arranged marriages, for example, and you&#x27;ll get the idea. They don&#x27;t find the appalling or alien in the least, and can be as tender and lovable between them as any couple.

Like with many things in life, success requires failure, even though failure can be devastating. In my experience, having gone through both, failure in a marriage is different from a breakup. It&#x27;s a deeper, more public, longer-lasting kind of failure. But the depth of the failure opens up access to a corresponding growth, and the personal awakening that I&#x27;ve gone through following my divorce has made me a better partner and person in every way.

Divorce has become too easy and men face too many risks: alimony, children are taken and assets for marriage to make any sense.<p>70%+ of divorce is by women and men pay 98%+ of alimony.<p>No thanks

That&#x27;s how life works anyway: what you get mirrors what you know about yourself, then you learn and move on.

Great article. But it seems like it was cribbed from <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thebookoflife.org&#x2F;how-we-end-up-marrying-the-wrong-people&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thebookoflife.org&#x2F;how-we-end-up-marrying-the-wron...</a>, even though they come to different conclusions.

Does make me wonder why people ever bother to get married. I mean it makes sense if you want&#x2F;have kids I suppose, but if you don&#x27;t then marriage really doesn&#x27;t offer any benefit and winds up being a HUGE financial disadvantage for men when the marriage inevitably ends.

Nugget of wisdom regarding picking partners (in love or other adventures):<p>&gt; the person who is good at disagreement

This article dates from May 28, 2016.It has been cited on HN many times in the past. Use the search facility to find comments. Nevertheless, it is worth a read.

Wouldn&#x27;t this bring up one very glaring reason not to marry someone though? They have a completely unrealistic view of marriage.