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I read this article in my Womens Health mag last night and i really like what it had to say. Goes to show that marriage isnt all rainbows and butterflies and i have to admit, thats relieving!!
http://www.womenshealthmag.com/sex-and-relationships/marriage-help
Great article! It's so true that we live in a throw away society and so many people expect things to be completley perfect and will leave if it isn't. Marriage takes work and will never be 100% perfect. But it's worth the work!
great article! Thank you for sharing it! I do think it is important to remember that a marriage isnt going to be perfect, but its about working together through the difficult times that makes it all worth it.
Really interesting!! The part I found most interesting was the reason they say that couples who live together before marriage are more likely to divorce (because once you live together you have more to lose by breaking up and you're more likely to get married even if it is wrong than if you were just dating). I have always heard the statistic that couples that live together first are more likely to get divorced and I couldn't think of any possible explanation for that. Its nice to finally have some kind of cause/effect to tie to the statistic.
I also like how realistic it is, because that is exactly how I view marriage. It isn't all sunshine and puppies, its work. I don't believe in soulmates and I don't believe that if it isn't easy it isn't worth it. So far I'm very blessed that my relationship with FI has been pretty easy... but I don't expect us not to have bumps in the road.
I like that obviously we know we all have the same complications in our lives adn in our marriages sometimes. Lets face it, there isn't a single couple out there that doesn't fight, and if there is, they dont fight because they don't talk- no one agrees on everything.
3M- I like the comment you made in your post "marriage isnt all rainbows and butterflies"..
it reminded immediately of one of my favorite verses from a Maroon5 song - "it's not always rainbows and butterflies, it's compromise that moves us along"
and it's soo true! in order to make our marriages work and to appreciate eachother to the fullest we have to make compromises sometimes, because we can't always win the fight. and marriage is worth working through those arguments adn slightly saddening times to make it stronger.
I really liked that article! I feel like I should email it to all of the married people or almost married that I know, and those that are just in the process of considering marriage.
@CorgiTales - "It isn't all sunshine and puppies, its work." I TOTALLY don't mind doing the work, but if my marriage could involve some puppies, I'd be a happy girl. I love puppies.
But seriously, folks. Great article! I sent it to FI, because I think it's a good conversation starter!
I really liked that article! I feel like I should email it to all of the married people or almost married that I know, and those that are just in the process of considering marriage.
I liked this line:
"Women now place more of a premium on being fulfilled in their marriages—having their dreams for intimacy, for sexual satisfaction, for challenge, all wrapped up into their marriage," he says. "That's a hard order to fill, and these people are likely to end up on the rocks because they learn pretty quickly that no one person is capable of delivering all their deepest hopes for meaning and purpose and happiness."
I see this problem in a lot of relationships. Good reminder :)
it's blocked at my job ("Adult Content" - ?) but i'll be reading this later!
I love this article. Thanks so much for sharing!
I'm not sure what would make younger couples have a more realistic perspective on marriage, which is sad. One day, I would really like to see dovroce rates decline, and if the cause of most divorces is unrealistic expectations, then that makes me really sad!
It's probably blocked because I'm sure there are sex related articles on Women's Health.
I read this and will be sharing it with my FI later. We could use the reminder that being hit with "a series of unfortunate events" doesn't mean we don't have a solid good relationship. It's easy to slide so deep into "woe is me" and "me me me" that you forget that ALL relationships are a struggle at times...and that's normal.
That was definitely a very well written article.
My favorite parts included:
"One of the biggest myths driving the divorce rate for young marrieds today, says Sollee, is that the changes that come with age naturally drive us apart. "Marriage is about forming your team. We don't promise to stay who we are when we get married. We don't promise not to change," she says. "One of the most important things we teach couples in marriage education is that you have to learn to welcome and integrate change on a daily basis."
I could not agree with this statement more. It is so much about being a team. This is why it disturbs me when so many brides say "it's MY day. MY Wedding". Uh. NO. It's yours and your fiances.
"This is why experts feel that today's generation of 20-somethings needs to learn some crucial skills (see "Make Your Marriage Stick"). But most important, they need to learn how to weather the ups and downs. "It's important not to get attached to the bad times, because they won't last, or the good times, because they're not going to last either," Weiner-Davis says. Her advice: Learn how to ride the wave. "That," she says, "is really the key to being in a long-term relationship and making it work."
A relationship is hard work!!!
I'm blocked too so I'm not sure exactly what the article says.
But, and maybe I'm alone in this, I see more couples that stay together even though they should break up than couples that break up even though they should stay together. So I'm sceptical of the idea that people just don't work on their relationships enough.
I'm not sure I think divorce rates need to go down - I think the expectation and swearing up and down that this is forever when you really mean this is for as long as it's fufilling in x y and z ways should decline. Children complicate this of course.
I do think that if a relationship is more work for an extended period of time than it is a pleasure or a force for good in your life - why stay?
I don't think longevity of marriage is a goal in and off itself. I don't want to die having been married for 55 miserable years or even for 20 miserable out of 55 total years. I'd rather get divorced. Of course, I (like everyone) think that my particular relationship will bring me more joy than grief for the foreseable future. I'm against going into a marriage thinking the only measure of success if whether or not you get divorced.
This is such a great article. It is very true that many people slip into marriage without really thinking things through. I could have easily been one of these women back in the day. When I was in college, I had dated a man for 5 years and of course the next step for me (or at least what I thought I wanted) was marriage. When we broke up, I hit the floor hard. There were so many signs that I can see now that should have alarmed me. Can you imagine if I would have taken the plunge?
Going through that break-up and learning about myself and my expectations and most importantly being happy with myself outside of a relationship helped me learn a lot. It allowed me to enter into the relationship with my now hubby with a whole different set of eyes. We learned to build our foundation first and learned that it won't be all "hearts and rainbows". Compromise and communication is KEY. If we are fighting something internally we talk about it and work through it.
I wish people took this more seriously.
For those that are blocked: Ugh. I totally screwed up the formatting.
Happy Marriage: How Not to Be the Starter WifeIn our culture of disposable "I dos," many new marriages end in splitsville. But you're not playing house, you're playing for keeps! Read this to make sure your bond stays strongGretchen Voss
I was totally blindsided—it felt like whiplash," says Stephanie Klein, 34, of her short-lived marriage in her twenties. "My life was charging forward, down the path that I had planned, and then, out of what felt like nowhere, we stopped short, and everything I knew to be true just wasn't anymore."
At the time, Klein—now a photographer and author in Austin, Texas—had everything a modern woman could want: the handsome and charming surgeon husband, the luxe pad in Manhattan, the hotshot job at an ad agency. After seeing him through med school and living with him for two years, she married him at age 24. Lacing up in lingerie, hosting game nights, signing his name to family birthday cards... "I didn't just love being married," she says, "I was good at it. And I thought he was too."
Then, when Klein was pregnant at the age of 27, her husband started getting laser hair removal, dousing himself in cologne, and wearing Prada. Turns out that, even though he was having sex with her after shopping for curtains for the baby's room, he was running around town with another woman. When she confronted him with evidence of his behavior, he unashamedly admitted: "Now that I'm a doctor, I'm in a whole new league."
And that is how the wheels came off her marriage and how Stephanie Klein unwittingly became a starter wife at the age of 29.
[snip]
I can understand living together - in some cases it really does work as advertised, and you see why you shouldn't marry a person because he or she is impossible to live with. But I've never been able to wrap my head around buying a house with someone to whom you aren't engaged.
I know there are bees who have done this, so I'm curious as to how the decision making process worked.
@teaandtoast: I have nothing bad to say about living together. I think the article just says that sometimes people get wrapped up in living together and don't break up even when they should because they live together and it would be too difficult.
While some of the things the article says are reasonable, the examples they include are weird. What should she have done when she found our her husband was cheating? Stay? Work on it?
I don't think expecting faithfulness from a spouse that promised it to you is having unrealistic expectations. Plenty of people are faithful.
I do think expecting 100 or 90% of the population to be capable of fidelity is unreasonable - but over 90% get married, so the real problem IMO is that too many people get married. People not capable or willing to be faithful shouldn't marry anyone who hasn't signed on for that.
This was a really good article. Sometimes I get so worked up and anxious about divorce, I get nauseous feeling (like I am now!). But I have to remember that I am in this for the long haul and that I am with my FI because I believe he is in this for the long haul as well.
And it's true, you can have unrealistic expectations from life and your partner and you have to remember compromise.
Im glad you bess liked this article as much as i did, i mean, who wouldnt? I literally found this article while my fiance and I were in the middle of a fight it made me look at things differently but also made me realize that what was written is exactly what i feel we are going through.
I may have imagined life being perfect at one time but im almost 30 and i realize that it is hard work. I will definitely leave this article open so he can read it.
Hum. I also think it should be noted that some of the reasons listed for the spike in divorces aren't, on the whole, bad things.
I'm also sort of confused as to how some of these women could've avoided being "started wives." Like the woman whose husband wrote in his journal that he didn't want to be married. Sounds like he was the one with unrealistic expectations - not her. How was she supposed to overcome his emotional immaturity?
@MissAsB - I have no problem with living together or buying a house before marrying someone. 
It's just that the latter seems so much riskier to me. I was wondering how bees who had done it were able to overcoem the fear, or what made it a good choice for them.
@arachna - I don't think the article was putting the blame on the wife for not working through the situation when her husband was cheating. It seemed to me that the article blamed him for buying into the idea that marriage isn't forever and you deserve upgrades--and then going out and getting himself one.
And I think the article also says that people get married who shouldn't--the whole section about people who slide into marriage just because it seems to make sense and it's easier than breaking up--no one blames those people for getting divorced. But they shouldn't have ended up married in the first place.
I don't believe this article advocates for people to stay in marriages and work it out no matter what--I do believe that it is encouraging everyone to understand better what to expect from marriage so that we can enter it informed and prepared. I don't think anyone in this day and age would say that staying in a bad marriage is a good idea, so the only thing we can do is try to create more good marriages through education and awareness. And make sure that we are not creating an entire generation of married couples with crazy expectations of unceasing marital bliss, who will be sorely disappointed when they realize that no one is 100% compatible, everyone fights, everyone changes, and nothing is easy. But it's totally worth it. :)
I hope it's ok - I had to snippet out the rest of the article re-post! Just wanted to be fair to the original author (Gretchen Voss) and Women's Health magazine.
Kinda weird that so many corporate firewalls would block a magazine called Women's Health!
@teaandtoast,
RE: Living together/buying a house prior to being engaged.
In my specific scenario. FI and I knew pretty much a couple years into our relationship that this was it. We were each others soul mate, the one, perfect, life partner, whatever you want to call it. There were significant events in our relationship not caused by US that made us stronger as a couple, as a unit, as a team. The commitment was there. We do not need "marriage" to feel like this is it. This is for life. It's been that way for us for many many years.
Then why did we not get engaged you ask?
There were outside factors. Family disapproval on my side. It was important for me, him and us that we had family approval before that happened. We knew in time they would come around. I knew they would realize what a great man he is. And they have!
So even though it took us 9 years to be engaged, we could not be happier that we chose to wait all those years. Because now we are happily planning our wedding with the full blessing, love and support of both families. Which was really important to us. I know most couples would've said screw my family, we want to be married now! But this was not the case for us.
The house purchase? Kinda fell into our laps. We were already committed and a house purchase made sense. We decided it made the most sense for our long terms goals. So we bought a house together. :)
OK. TMI!
@ Mr. Bee
No problem! I wished there was a quote function on here!!
@ Arachna: I have a roughly similar attitude, but I think I'm slightly on the other side of the "working it out" conundrum. I would personally stick it out long after there isn't much joy or love in the marriage because I am an imminently practical person. Divorce is very rough financially, and if I have kids, pretty much all research shows that having the two parents in the house or as involved as possible is the best approach. I am practical enough to live in the same house, with different rooms, for years. I don't think there is any shame in that, either.
I loved this article and shared it with FI. I think it touched on several key societal trends, but what jumped out most to me was the fact that, as @Arachna pointed out, not everyone is capable of being faithful, but most people marry anyway. I've never understood why women enter into marriages with "alpha male" types who may be attractive, professionally successful, etc, but likely to cheat. I work in finance, so I'm surrounded by these kinds of men. While they are very charming and fun and intelligent, but I would NEVER marry one. So maybe it's the woman's fault not for leaving after he cheats, but for marrying him in the first place.
@ MissAB per the statistic of couples living together before marriage = increased likelihood of divorce. I took a class a couple years back (I think it was human sexuality) and the prof, whom has a sociology background brought up discussion on this topic. Her view was that though the statistic was true, it was biased in a sense because it didn't look at the state of the relationship before marriage. Another study looked at this and found couples who were happy and living together were more likely to have a successful marriage (and vice versa)
Personally, I agree with this and that a marriage's success is based on it's foundation and a couples ability to maintain a foundation. A well built house can't stay that way unless work is put into it and it will be easier to maintain that house if it has a good foundation from the start.
I do agree that people do get married for the wrong reasons too and that living together already can be one of them.
@bluebutterfly: That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the insight from your class!
@Bluebutterfly - I like that explanation because I think that is more realistic. Makes perfect sense to me.
Stats can be great but there is sometimes information that is being left out. This is just like the divorce rate. Another bee had posted about this a week or so ago.
Interesting read to say the least!
@GirlWithaRing - And where does that line end, exactly?
What about women whose husbands hit them? Are they supposed to somehow intuit that this will come to pass based on a collection of traits? Like, 'Well, he sometimes lost his temper and stressed out supereasily so I should've known that when he lost his job he would start screaming at me and throwing me out of the house."
The article was interesting, but riddled with improper use of statistics!
"Twenty percent of all marriages fail within five years, and of those,
one in four end within two years . . . the divorce rate is highest
during the first two years of marriage."
What?? If 1/4 of these divorces occur in the first two years, that would imply that, on average, 1/4 of these divorces occur in each of years 3, 4, and 5. So the divorce rate, according to these statistics, is actually lower in the first two years!
Also, as somebody else already mentioned, the statistic about living together before marriage leading to higher divorce rates is a bit of a stretch. Another possible explanation (among MANY) is that the type of person who does not wish to live together unmarried is likely to be the type of person that feels strongly against divorce (ie, for religious reasons).
Sorry, I'm a math/stats nerd . . . but I just had to point that out!
@teadntoast - Good point. I don't believe that behaviors like cheating and physical/emotional abuse can be predicted in every case. So if I all I know is that so-and-so were married and the husband hit or cheated on the wife, I would by no means automatically ascribe fault to the woman. However, if the guy exhibits disturbing character traits (cheated on a previous partner, often lashes out verbally at other, etc) and the woman marries him anyway, you bet I am going to blame her. Or, worse yet, if they marry right away and he starts exhibiting these traits only after the wedding, I'm going to blame her even more.
PS I do think it's possible to distinguish between your boyfriend occasionally losing one's temper after a stressful day at work and a repeated pattern of yelling/lashing out at family, friends, and strangers in response to the slightest annoyance.
@teaandtoast- i'm with you on the buying a house thing. I would never sign that line without a ring... but I know others feel differently. I think it all comes down to your particular situation and what you're comfortable with.
@arachna- interesting point.... that maybe longevity is not necessarily the goal? I think its an interesting thing to bat around and consider... and I would agree that I would always rather be happily single than unhappily coupled. However, I think that accepting that longevity is not an ultimate goal would require us to change our basic relationship model. Marriage should be much easier to get in and out of, OR most people just shouldn't get married. I think maybe the point of the article is to tell us all to grow up a little bit. We're an instant gratification kind of generation and I don't think that many people (myself included sometimes) have accepted that we just aren't always going to get our way. That every day isn't going to be fantastic. Not in our jobs, our relationships, or hobbies, or our marriages. I think that we often DO have unrealistic expectations and believe that marriage = lifelong happiness. I don't believe that marriage creates happiness. I believe that we create our own happiness through a lot of hard work in a lot of different areas of our life, and that I would really like my best friend to hold my hand through it all.
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