06-02-2005, 05:24 PM
ShadowHM,Jun 2 2005, 06:11 AM Wrote:My 'present' husband is the only husband I have had. :)
I met him when I was 18. We were both dating others at the time, but remained part of the same social circle and developed a friendship.
We started 'dating' (including a sexual relationship) when I was 23. We moved to co-habitation when I was 25. We legally married when I was 30, because we were ready to have children together. As you can see, we took our time about making committments, because we were concerned about the long run. I didn't commit to 25 years. I committed to life - with him.
But back to the topic:
I am really bemused by your notion of 'dating'.
Either you flat out disagree (on what grounds you are not specific) with my contention that sexual compatibility is part of a good marriage, or you didn't read what I wrote the first time. You will note that I am not suggesting that it is the only consideration.
The high divorce rate today is due to many reasons. First of all, people now do have the ability to legally leave a marriage. That has saved many from living hells.
Second, we no longer live in anything like the environment where our notions of marriage evolved. People used to live in close proximity to extended family. That part of the ceremony where the witnesses vowed to aid the couple was important. It meant that there was a support system for helping work out problems. Now we (generally) live in nuclear families that are far from extended family. We have to hire marriage councillors instead of consulting 'Aunt Maggie' and 'Uncle Frank', or parents or grandparents. Heck, in many cases we don't even really know our spouse's extended family at all.
Third, there remains this fairy tale notion that marriage is a 'happily ever after' thing. No matter how much you love someone, you are going to disagree at times. And you have to spend energy on working it through. You have to compromise. You have to *gasp* work at it. A lot of marriages go bad because people don't spend that time and energy. They merely bail out instead.
You will note the absence of pre-marital sex from my list. It is deliberate.
I won't call you old fashioned. I will call you naive and overly idealistic, as opposed to realistic. :)
(Brief tangent: You mentioned your concern at seeing your nieces get pregnant, blaming pre-marital sex. I think you are making a mistake - blame the ignorance that prevented them from using contraceptives. We have the technology; we need to make sure that people use it, and make procreation a deliberate act.)
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Who is not reading whose postings? I never said that my nieces were pregnant. What I said was that girls that are my nieces ages and Younger are getting pregnant.
And I may be Naive, as you say, but it has been my experience from observing the Married couples that I see around me that have gone through messy break-ups because they never took the time to get to know one another before they got married. So don't talk to me about not being realistic. This stuff is happening in my family right now, the breaking up and divorcing part that is. I have two cousins that have been married for over 30 years and now the wives have decided that they don't want to be married anymore. As to your comment about Sexual Compatibility being only one of many factors, what I took your original statement to mean was that sex is the only important factor to consider, and I don't agree with that at all.
As to your first point about Divorce, let me ask you a question. Why is it that people who get divorced didn't figure out that the relationship wasn't going to work before they got to the point of getting married? I'll tell you why. The reason that they didn't is because they weren't really communicating with each other at all. That is why Marriage Counselors exist, to help couples that are considering getting Married work through any problems that they may have, which is the main reason that I support the idea of Pre-Marital Counseling. And whose fault is it if you and your spouse don't know each other's extended families, theirs or yours?
As you say, Marriage is something that both parties have to WORK at, and that there is compromise involved. And I may not know what it is like to be married to someone, but that doesn't mean that I won't someday. What is bemusing you about what I said about Dating? All I was trying to say was that people Date for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is to find someone that they can spend the rest of their lives with. One important reason people date each other is to make friends with other people. Do you understand what I am trying to say?