Marriage in general - a rough essay against.

Straight or gay, whatever kind you like.

Okay.. first log on the fire. I am OPPOSED to marriage. I think it is one of the most foolish things man has ever invented. (Adept, I know you probably believe God invented it, so that is an entirely different discussion.)

Where is my evidence?

I don't remember where I got the statistics I formed my position with, so I have gone and found new ones on the net, and I'm more than willing to entertain different statistics from different sources.

But I'll start with these ones, pulled more or less randomly from http://www.aamft.org/Press_Room/Pres...ases/stats.htm as it was the first hit Google pulled up.

In 1997, 2,384,000 people got married in the United States.
In the same year, 1,163,000 got divorced.

Simple math: this works out to 48.78% as many people getting divorced every year as are getting married.

This means that (over time, if the statistics remain similar), almost 1/2 of all marriages are failing!

Now we turn to infidelity in the marriages that remain together.

Again, statistics pulled out of the net, this time from
http://answers.google.com/answers/ma...view&id=226300

"About 24% of men (and 14% of women) have had sex outside of
marriage."

and

"Some studies show much higher statistics—as many as 50 to 65% of men
having affairs, but do not give statistics about multiple affairs." (No figure for women is given here but the page they get those statistics from gives ranges of between 25% and 60% for women.)

Additionally, you cannot assume that ALL of the adulterers overlap, i.e. that every relationship in which the female cheats is one of the marriages in which the male cheats as well. Unfortunately there are no statistics on this available (to me at least, yet).

These ARE wildly varying statistics to try and work with. Mathematically, they give a range of anywhere between 24% and 79% of marriages having sufficient marital issues to result in at least one partner having an affair, with both of those two numbers being too extreme to be statistically likely.

Even if you take the lower numbers, and assume that a higher percentage of adulterous partners will be matched with other adulterous partners, it seems to me that it is reasonable to deduce that a conservative estimate puts somewhere around one third of marriages suffering from one or both partners being unfaithful.

I'll leave the idea that a marriage could be happy with the existence of an affair temporarily out of the equation here, but feel free to add it back in if you can find relevant statistics.

Mathematically, this gives the following:

52% of marriages do not end in divorce, times 67% of marriages will not suffer from infidelity, equals 35% of marriages being successful enough to not experience divorce or adultery.

Now of these 35%, how many of these marriages do you think are happy ones? There are many more things that can make a marriage an unsuccessful one besides divorce or adultery. Spousal abuse, alcoholism, people marrying unwisely/too young, "irreconciliable differences" are all things that can exist in these 35%. Where are the statistics on these and other factors? I don't know. Maybe I will try and find them later, but it isn't really important to me to figure them out exactly, because the numbers are ALREADY too frightening.

When you look at the cost of divorce and failed marriages today... and I don't mean the financial cost, although that is horrendous too!... is it really a good idea to commit yourself to an institution that, if you are OPTIMISTIC about the odds, has only a one in three chance of succeeding?

And if you take the pessimist's odds, you have LESS than a one in eight chance of success.

[/soapbox]

....

Now to answer the questions from the gay marriage thread, and the ones that have undoubtedly been inspired by the above thread...

Am I married? Yes, and I have no intention of divorcing my wife.

Is it a happy marriage? "Sometimes" is the only answer I can give. I genuinely believe we have a better relationship than almost any other married couple we know... I do love her dearly, but we have to put a lot of effort into making our relationship work.

Would I marry again if we divorced? HELL NO, not after discovering what it is actually like to be married! If I ever fell in love with someone else, why would I want to ruin that by going and marrying her?

Would I advise other people to get married? NO, categorically no. Not unless you have already been living with the person for years and years and you still can't get enough of each other. I believe such compatibility does exist, but I believe it is extremely rare.

Will I advise my son to get married? HELL NO.

Will I support him if he gets married against my advice? Yes, actually. He'll need all the support he can get. :D :D :D

I've been married for over 10 years. I wouldn't know what I'd do without my wife. Yeah, I've seen women I'd like to have some fun with, but I would never act on it, not that I couldn't, just that I wouldn't. I love and respect my wife too much to do anything like that. I don't know what I'd do if she ever cheated on me, maybe cry alot and throw her out of the house and beat the crap out of the idiot who would fool around with a married woman. Why did you have to bring statistics up like that to everyones attention? Now you got me thinking what the hell is she doing when she works late. Who was that on the phone that made her go around erasing the caller ID on all the phones? *69 would call the caller back, but if it called a man back... Why'd ya have to post statistics like that up on here? Oh well, I guess I'll start flirting with that brunette at work that's been flirting with me to see where that leads to. Thanks for the heads up. :thumbs:

Well ... I'm divorced now ... & I know bitterness when I smell it ! :p

At this point it'd be worth asking why some folks stay married ..? :eek2:

Ditto Ed... I am still married and wondering why.... oh yah, two kids and financial security... makes it worth it in the long run.

Me?

Single and glad of it. Oh, it would be nice, there are certain things being married can do for you that being single can't, but everyone of my married friends wishes he was married to someone else - or not at all.

That's why they talk to me when they want a safe ear.

The problem is people change, and you're not the same person you were 10, 20, or 30 years ago.

I think I'd be in favor of a change in the law to have the marriage contract renewable every 10 years. That certainly would lower the divorce rate and would force people to re-evaluate their relationship..

Just a thought..... ;)

http://www.borg.com/~jules/g1.jpg

Three children, three grandchildren, three greatgrandchildren (coincidentally enough), many joys, many sorrows, and 61 years later:

http://www.borg.com/~jules/g2.jpg

This is all the justification I'll ever need to favor family over the alternative.

I've been married for close to 19 years. I recommend it, even with the tough times. :thumbs:

4 years now; I know it's not much compared to others, but it's by far more than some marriages last... and I would get married to her again :)
If one cheats it's also the other's fault for not being able to keep his/her partner close...
Advice to others? If you're not 100% sure that you want to spend 110% of your time with that person then don't get married! Otherwise by all means go for it!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CeeBee

If one cheats it's also the other's fault for not being able to keep his/her partner close...

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I couldn't disagree more https://forums.windrivers.com/images.../2007/09/1.gif

[jumps up on soapbox]

maybe I'm going to sound harsh, but if a person is at a point in a relationship where he/she is seriously wanting to be with someone else, then he/she should end the relationship and pursue the other person. plain and simple. cheating is a cowards way out, an attempt to have cake and eat it too. are both partners responsible for the poor state of the relationship? absolutely. . . .but that is no excuse for choosing to cheat. cheaters who blame their spouse, to me, are just like addicts (drug or alcohol) who blame everyone else for "making" them indulge in their addiction. If you choose to rub your personal parts against someone else it's nobody's fault but your own. If sex or a relationship with another person is something that you want to pursue seriously you should have enough respect for your significant other to at the very least end the relationship and at the very best say "I think our relationship is in trouble because I'm having these feelings, I want to make things better, let's talk about it."

[gets down off soapbox.]

Maybe your viewing it from the wrong end Wayward?

Maybe if they banned divorce it would make people more thoughful and responsible of the situation when they do commit to one another.Instead of quickie marriages and divorces that some of our well known "pop stars" are making which is a mockery in itself.

BTW while we are on the subject what are the panels views on arranged marriages?
I personally abore the practice but as I dont live within those cultures I think I may be considered to have a biased view on the matter.

Me & my missus get on just fine thanks. Eight years of marraige, (got together 10 years before we got married), and 2 kids later and so far so good. It takes two to tango, and I think we compliment each other.

Our secret of happiness? Give each other enough space to breath.

I often find a useful exercise is to translate a line of reasoning into a different scenario and see if it makes sense. So I'll try to support the premise that those Marriage automobiles are one of the most foolish things ever invented and justify why I am opposed to them. Let's see how it goes...

Every year a million new Marriages are put onto the road, and disturbingly, of the thirty eight million Marriages in existence, four hundred thousand are involved in accidents, and five hundred thousand break down. Since almost half of Marriage autos have accidents, and half of them break down, you have almost no chance of having a successful Marriage.

Clearly we would be much, much better off if there were no Marriage autos.

Make sense?

(A similar scenario occurred here in Australia with the debate over restricting firearms. Aus has never been a very gun-happy place anyway, but much was made of guns being the top cause of deaths in violent crimes. Huge numbers of guns were destroyed, and the anti-gun lobby were thrilled when guns were no longer the top cause of violent deaths. Imagine people's dismay when they discovered knives were now the largest cause of violent death... Yes, knives are now being restricted... Wonder what they'll do when bare hands are the top murder weapon? :rolleyes: )

Wayward, I see the most telling thing you put in your post as this:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wayward Clam

we have to put a lot of effort into making our relationship work

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I'm single, so maybe I would be out of line to lecture on marriage. However I still hope to be married, and I also hope I can think sensibly about matters. Marriage is a particular standard of permanent relationship, and divorce is the name given to the process of ending such a relationship if it fails.

Unless one were to propose no permanent relationship should ever be established, there will always be successful long term relationships. Some will fail, some will experience infidelities, most will probably at some time have to deal with difficulties that have the potential to end the relationship.

Eliminating the specific relationship of Marriage is not going to change this. Statistics on divorces/separations, affairs, violence etc could only have worthwhile significance in establishing success or otherwise of the principle of marriage if they can be compared with the same statistics for non-marriage relationships. I observe that in so many cases, the figures that actually would enable these kinds of comparisons to be made are "unavailable", "uncertain", or "widely varying estimates".

Basically, all eliminating "marriage" would do would stop these things from being able to be attributed to "marriage". Like the gun/knife transition above, I wonder what would be blamed next?

Been married 28 yrs to an amazing woman.
Wouldnt have it any other way
I aint got time to train a new one HEH
well ok that's not true
She dont have time to train another one

Lots of divorce, ya yer right and I know why.
ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME
never us

I think many of those numbers are going to change. Men's rights movements allowing for more fair divorce/custody cases are going to lesson the burdens, and make the woman think twice. People of my generation(I am 28) are waiting longer and longer to get married, very wise choice. Also, we were the first ones to go through such high divorce rates from our crappy baby boomer parents, and do not wish to repeat the mistakes they made.

No, marriage is just going through a little rough time as it evolves with our changing society. I commend all those that are married and making it work, and can only hope that when I find the perfect woman, I can have a marriage as happy and full of love as my parents have.