I can say with great confidence - do not get married. Do not live in a common law state. You will very likely regret it immensely.
If I had been legally married to my ex - I would’ve been raked over the coals. I could see myself being the man on that rig. She contributed nothing to our relationship (financially or emotionally) and I put her through college while she didn’t work or pay for anything. Yet, even if I showed such selflessness, she would’ve gone to court to get half my savings I slaved over and then demand alimony for all eternity. Only because she knew she could. I think once you give people power - they will use it as much as they possibly can even if it is completely unjust. Power corrupts…
The legal and cultural institution of marriage is ridiculous. Don’t do it! And definitely don’t be with someone who doesn’t work or is a project. It’s miserable (because they become entitled and lack gratefulness).
It has left me feeling quite scared even if I didn’t go through the toughest parts. I’m overall feeling unable to trust women romantically. After it - I really feel like I’m taking off the rose colored glasses and seeing how poorly I’ve been treated by so many. I’ve stopped feeling like I’m the problem - after all, no one ever said I was. I’ve been the harshest critic of myself. Anyway - don’t get a project car for a partner. They don’t deserve you.
Upvoted, unfortunately it happened to me.
I out-earned my spouse by 4x and lost everything when she decided she wasn't happy.
Do not expect any gratitude : You have no idea who your ex-wife until you meet her in family court.
My ex wife took half of our (my) assets (including my 401k).
The lawyers took what was left as I was fighting to prevent her from moving away 3'000 miles with our kids (I had to pay for both her and my lawyer)
In the end my ex wife won her move away.
I lost my kids and I am now stuck paying more than half my salary in child support + child support add-ons such as private school, nannies, healthcare.
The remaining of my salary is spent on travel across the country once a month to be able to see my kids.
It is a very risk bet... you don't have much to win and a lot to loose if you are a men (custody) and the higher earner.
I am sincerely grieved for you and your situation, and wish you find joy and perhaps re-discover trust for women in the future.
Hopefully it is not poor taste, but I do disagree with your advice. Yes, marriage comes with a great deal of risk, because it is codifying your love. Love itself is risk, though. As C.S. Lewis said:
> To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.
Yes, marriage opens yourself up to a great deal of potential financial damage. It also opens yourself up to a secure romance and friendship, where you can build a future based on commitment to one another. I far prefer to give my wife not just my love and companionship, but also my commitment, my future, and yes, my money. She does the same for me, and it is far more secure and stable than just a dating relationship which could end at any time for any reason. Divorce is way harder to go through than a simple breakup, for either party. Just the sheer effort of a divorce gives you stability, regardless of social, legal, and cultural implications.
Try to trust me when I say this - when you’re looking at many years of not having to work and you don’t even have to foot the lawyer bill to make it happen… it’s not as difficult as you think. It’s not a picnic but it’s not purgatory either.
If you were fortunate enough to marry a similarly earning woman then congratulations. Unfortunately - those are exceptional for this industry. At least where I am - it is rare to find a woman making $400K+/yr like I am. Even rarer that she’ll continue working after marriage - as many of the women I know who have made it that far end up giving up the gig and leave the husband to climb the rest of the career ladder to make up for the lost income.
Ultimately - your argument isn’t good. Your argument is “you should get married because getting divorced is so painful!” Why not just avoid divorce altogether?
I’ve seen enough loveless marriages. I put my fucking partner through college at an elite institution. I’m out well over $100K on that - and I didn’t even marry the woman. You don’t need to be married to support someone or to be giving.
Your marriage could end at any point. You just live naively thinking it won’t - but it can and it certainly could. There’s nothing stopping your wife from walking out the door and then filing for divorce. All that is different is that she needs to fill out a few forms or get you to pay for a lawyer - and the upside for her is immense. Hugely immense. Your earning for decades and half of your savings.
> Your marriage could end at any point. You just live naively thinking it won’t
Oh, I'm quite aware that it could end (whether due to death or divorce). I choose not to spend my time dwelling on the possibility, because that would be like living in hopelessness. There are a lot of bad things that might happen to us in the future, and some are even likely, but living in constant dread for the future is joylessness.
I'm not saying I live in fear of it either. I'm saying I don't care to participate in marriage because it is currently an institution that has not allowed itself to be modified to fit couples as they see fit. It is a one-size option and it - unfortunately - does not work for people like myself.
If I was to marry - I'd have to marry someone with the same level of income, spending/saving habits, and so forth for the marriage to be "equal" in the eyes of the law. As it stands - I don't consider that as much of a factor for my relationships because I'm an extremely giving person. However, my willingness to give everything to someone ends when the relationship does. If I choose to not interact with this person anymore then why should I be in their debt until the end of time?
It's not worth it. It creates a perverse power incentive for people in the marriage as well. Again - maybe you're not in that situation but I was making $400K+ and they were making $0 for years. They had no intention of ever working because they knew I could pay for everything. It went from gratefulness in our first year to entitlement by the end of our relationship and had spread like a plague ruining everything. I cannot fathom how much they would feel entitled to if we had been legally married - even if they contributed literally nothing. And I'm dead serious - they didn't do housework or child raising or anything either - they did nothing and yet there are no absolutely no enforceable protections for people like myself... BESIDES not marrying - which is what I advocate for.
I advocate for love, support, giving, and so much but it needs to be on your terms. It cannot be on the terms of some archaic governmental, cultural, and religious institution.
If we can fix the system, then no 'hopelessness' may anymore be involved. That's what we need to push for. As of now, the system for broken marriages is hopelessly bad.
My advice to all would be that even when in a good marriage, to the extent you can, don't make choices that would make the end of it hopeless for you.
There’s also plenty of empirical evidence for marriage’s positive impacts on kids not to mention the general principle that two are stronger than one. It’s an institution that’s thousands of years old and stretches across every society and religion for good reason.
Sadly not all marriages are successful (not unlike a startup). But this doesn’t mean they’re not worth pursuing.
I overall agree to what you have said. Marriage has positive impacts on children, and that's why love itself evolved. However, "marriage" as it stands today from a social and legal standpoints comes with a lots of side things that should not be. Times have changed in the thousands of years, however, the system is not being adapted with these changes. The challenges that would have been when the concept of marriage developed (which predates written history) are not the same as the challenges today.
I am not against marriage in itself, however, what it means all taken together is in need of adjustment. And that will happen sooner or later. The positive impacts on children can continue as the system is refined. The only question is how many suffer during the transition phase.
I'm adding to what bradlys has written in response.
Women, marriage, love are different things. We should not let these be confused together. A push back against marriage is not same as that against love, and nor against women in general.
Love and emotional vulnerability are one topic. Specific divorce laws are another topic.
As a thought experiment, imagine pushing the divorce laws even further in the existing direction. Imagine a law saying: "if a wife kills her husband, this is not considered a crime, and she automatically gets all his property". Wouldn't this make men even more emotionally vulnerable? Wouldn't this make marriage a more exciting adventure? How much more attention would we pay to choosing the right partner! Definitely seems like a move in the right direction. (just kidding)
Put wife through school, bought her a car while we were engaged (hers blew up). She didn't work for our entire marriage save but for the last year. She had this weird plan to "take all the money and leave me with all the debt" which she proudly told my brother.
Her plan was to run up our credit cards with daily expenses then take off with all the money in the bank accounts. Of course, that's not how divorce works.
The only thing that partially saved me was, she was too arrogant+cheap+stupid to get a lawyer who would have told her who things actually work. I don't want to be married to her, but I often wonder what would have happened if she had understood how divorce works.
I'm currently preparing a court action because she won't let me see our daughter-- despite me having taken care of her the entirety of covid.
This forum is full of [potential] immigrants so a little warning for all of you laughing at American men. It can happen to you even if you got married abroad and so on completely different terms. In CA she can take not just half of your money but half of your money forever. EVEN IF YOUR WERE CAREFUL ENOUGH NOT TO IMPREGNATE HER!!! Your only defence will be to go back to the old country. So think twice about providing her with H-4.
Also, there will be no shelter to run to. No safe space provided by the government, no newspapers complaining about domestic violence against you or political campaigns for your rights. You'll be on your own.
And don't expect to recover from it. It will scar you for life. You'll probably reach a new low plateau in a few years but you former self or productivity will be gone for good.
Are you from the US ? I hear so many (soooo many) US men saying the same exact thing. Half of Bill Burr fame comes from marriage stories. Is it the same in every country ? relationship often bring their own madness but the US seem to have their very own kind.
ps: i'm not criticizing anybody btw, and oh I forgot, I saw people giving a lot and receiving nothing back, so I kinda get a bit of your story. It's just the habit of "give me half your money. bye." that gets to me.
upvoted, happened to me, and I had two kids from her. The moment she knew she could do it, she used ALL the power the laws gave her, and until today I am harassed by her. Not worth it, never again. Marriage is the biggest scam we were miss-educated about.
As a recently (<1 month) divorced man without kids, I have to admit it really shakes you to your core. Especially after being more than a decade with a person you thought you could trust and go to the grave with, to have them end it all in 1 week because "I no longer have feelings for you" is devastating on many levels.
Obviously therapy is a good first resource and then working on yourself going forward is a good strategy but man, I can totally understand how some men are obliterated when children are involved and the other spouse is out for blood. I consider myself lucky that it happened before I got too old, had children and who knows what other things could have happened but damn, it still hurts.
4 years ago last month, for me. In some ways it gets better - you don't have to answer to anybody but yourself, again. In others, it doesn't - society now sees you a bit differently, and will continue to do so until you somehow get back "on the rails" with a new partner.
> I can totally understand how some men are obliterated when children are involved and the other spouse is out for blood
Happened to a friend of mine and I thank my lucky star every day that we kept things civil. Men in particular have a lot to lose.
For those skimming the thread, this analysis takes opportunity cost into account. It would seem women mostly "do worse" because they stopped working during the marriage. As far as net cashflows from one partner to the other post-marriage, it'd surprise me if it wasn't mostly flowing from men to women. But, honestly, that's almost entirely obvious from the fact that men mostly continue to work and women often stop.
Haha well I wouldn't put too much weight on your "study", an article by the atlantic... Modern news channels / papers show extreme bias in their reporting and editorial content these days.
I can relate to the devastating on many levels part. I felt like I didn't actually know what happened in the past, so I didn't know who I was in the present, and the future I was working towards was gone. It was existentially disorienting.
I know this is unsolicited advice, but for what it's worth take some time to figure out how and why you found yourself in the situation. Write about the past and use the writing to process the negative emotions. You'll come to a deeper understanding of yourself, and the world, which is when you can start constructing a compelling future.
I hope you find peace and happiness in the future.
> I felt like I didn't actually know what happened in the past, so I didn't know who I was in the present, and the future I was working towards was gone. It was existentially disorienting.
I feel like it happens a lot in modern relationships. People become so interdependent and build themselves and their identities propped against each-other (to the point of neglecting families and friends even), so much that when it chatters it's a life changing experience. The interdependence could even be a cause of the breakup itself. I also feel like a lot of dysfunctional couples are staying together not to break the illusion (some kind of weir sunk cost fallacy).
People need space and solitude to find themselves, only then they can start building healthy and stable relationships, ~50% of married couple divorce (and much more unmarried breakup), statistically your couple won't last, live like every day is the last day of your relationship and make the best out of it (it also helps keeping the gears of love running).
Treat love as a drug (or food), when used in moderation and in a safe manner it can be soothing and positive, when your life starts to exclusively revolve around it it quickly can spiral out of control. Maintain a good routine; friends, hobbies, sport, job, &c.
Read books about the psychology of love, couples, relationships, breakups, it helps a lot when you figure out that most people are going through the same thing and are getting past it with time. You can also check out stoic philosophers and how to live for and by yourself, you don't have to take it to the letter but it certainly gives you another point of view.
That figure is outdated and I'd challenge what it represents. Here's more up to date info:
>The most recent data we have from the 2019 American Community Survey puts the rate at 14.9 divorces per 1,000 marriages, the lowest number since 1970. [0]
Further, the "50% of marriages end in divorce" is heavily skewed because it includes serial divorces/remarriages. If 5 couples marry for life, and one person goes through 5 spouses, then 50% of marriages end in divorce. But what you're really saying is that 80% of marriages are stable and 20% are unstable, not 50/50. Divorce, and re-marriage, also increase the chance of future divorce according to the Census Bureau[1].
The increasing percentage of non-divorcing marriages might be self-selecting in a sense since it is now socially acceptable to never get married, so we miss out on ‘breakups’ that are long/medium term. (E.g. non-married couples sleeping together for 5 years and having no children and then having a horrible breakup is more likely today than 100 years ago, and they are lost in the divorce statistic).
The topic is the financial problem though, so that statistic would be irrelevant.
In a certain way, 5 years together and then breakup is what you should be aiming for, rather than marriage + kids and then breakup. The first one is "the test bed", the latter is a mess
I love this quote. I can't tell you how many people get married, have 2 children (it's always 2!!!) and then pretty much immediately get divorced. They think that by saying "My ex", they're respected more in society ("Oh, someone married you? You must not be that bad.") They don't understand how expensive the divorce process is and how they would have been so much better off having those 2 kids with a sperm donor/surrogate. "The first one is "the test bed", the latter is a mess." Hope you don't mind if I use that quote.
Isn't marriage by default (law-wise) forcing an assets-split? Going back to the original state would be fine, but that's not what usually happens from my understanding
How come you don't count these 5 marriages this 1 person went through?
You have 5 stable marriages + 5 marriages that ended up in divorce = 10 marriages in total
So yes, 50% of marriages are 'unstable' in your example.
If you count people affected, (and even assuming that these failed marriages were with a partner who was never married either before or after), then you have:
10 people in 'stable' marriages + 6 people in 'unstable' marriages -> still not quite the 80/20 ratio
If 15% of the population participates in 90% of the divorces it’s an important factor in the commentary on the institution of marriage. It indicates that some individuals are more or less compatible for it as opposed to a 50/50 random gossip that yours will fail.
That's a fair question and it depends on what you're trying to get out of the framing. It's similar to the "mean vs median" thing in averages. The absolute average divorce rate is 50%, but the typical marriage survives 85% of the time.
I often see "50% of marriages end in divorce" as an argument to not get married. Why get married if "until death due us part" is a coin-toss? That framing ignores that the overwhelming majority of first-time marriages are marriages for life.
I had a family with 3 kids, so it left quite an impact on me.
For years I felt like the real me was still non-divorced, living his life like normal. And I ended up in this surreal parallel universe, where I'm divorced and living in some kind of bad dream.
Good thing that feeling is over, and I was able to pick up my life again. Your mind can play some crazy tricks to cope with certain situations.
> I felt like I didn't actually know what happened in the past, so I didn't know who I was in the present, and the future I was working towards was gone. It was existentially disorienting.
Right, I can relate to this, especially because I never got closure on exactly why I wasn't worth fighting for or being given a heads up that I was doing something very wrong.
> I know this is unsolicited advice, but for what it's worth take some time to figure out how and why you found yourself in the situation.
I'm going to try and do that, I think reflecting back over the last decade, I definitely changed a lot and there were signs of some things not working but I always had this "you have to give it everything you've got" attitude and didn't want to give up.
> I hope you find peace and happiness in the future.
Unfortunately we had moved to a brand new city last year during COVID and I'm pretty much alone here so it's definitely harder. I'm doing my best to break into social groups and clubs but it's not easy, especially during a pandemic.
Well if you happen to be in Toronto or San Fransisco let me know via email. I'm happy to go for a coffee or beer with someone knew to a city. I'm usually in TO, but I'm in SF once every month and a half for work.
If for some reason I don't respond please reach out on Twitter. My personal email gets a lot of spam and Google is great, but occasionally real stuff slips by.
1. Talking to a person who went through the same thing.
2. Buddies that invited themselves and planned some other social activities to get my head away from it.
So I would suggest to give him a call, or a video call and play a remote board game with some buddies or something like that. (or Among Us, which is also fun over a video call)
It's surprising to me that this article, which was mostly about the life of a man on an oil rig, could inspire such discussion about divorce.
Obviously, divorce touches on a very fundamental part of many people's lives (especially, it seems, for men) - and we so rarely discuss it. It's amazing to me that there are so few places to talk about this, that the comments section on a short character piece (which in all honesty, barely discusses the problems in a divorce and did not present a single statistic) seems one of the few places where people do share. Maybe this is something to think about for the people untouched by divorce, and who can avoid its pitfalls before the "bullet hits the bone", unlike the rest of us.
> It's surprising to me that this article, which was mostly about the life of a man on an oil rig, could inspire such discussion about divorce.
It's only surprising if you assume people read the story, instead of simply reacting to the headline. It's against the rules to say, but I'd bet the big majority of commenters never opened the link above.
The author of the article (or the editor) also must have thought that it was a key aspect of the article given that it was chosen to be the title.
And there wasn't a great deal else in the article (some discussion of oil rigs, including Piper Alpha, but not much specifics). We never got to find out what the stories written by the person being interviewed were. I actually found it a bit odd, like it was an introduction to a longer article that got cut off just as the main part was starting. In the end, the anecdote involving divorce was the only substantial thing in there. So even if you did read it, that's a fair part to react to.
That was exactly the feeling I had. I actually thought it was a very interesting article about the life of an oil rig worker. Suddenly, and in a throwaway fashion, we get a rumor about some unfortunate man and that's all. If this was meant to be an article about divorce, why wasn't there more divorce-related material? If this was supposed to be about oil rigs, why not focus on that and change the title? Very jarring experience all-around.
Our society doesn't have much incentive in speaking about things which are seen as negative like death or divorce.
Marrying and having kids is also a pillar of the economy / consumption.
Having multiple kids and spending several hundreds of thousands of dollars (in the US) between school, healthcare, nanny, sports gears, clothes drives the economic machine.
If men knew the dire consequences of divorce and stopped marrying and having kids, the whole GDP would take a hit.
Two years is the industry standard, and I think you can reasonably assume that all policies cover it after two years. (Before two years, all moneys paid are returned, but that's all.)
Going through this myself as well. Sadly - divorce shouldn't be such a devastating process as it is (in the US).
Child support statues are incredibly flawed in certain states -- NYS in particular -- and lead to the process being more drawn out than it needs to be. NYS doesn't take child custody splits into account when it comes to setting child support, and as a result the "high earner" pays a pro-rata share based on relative income to the "low earner", irrespective of any custody arrangement.
[Edit to add] Exacerbating this is that it's generally cheaper to reach a settlement, instead of trying to advocate to actually fix the laws / statutes.
Also went thru this recently and I can empathize with you. Particularly concerning to my situation is the repeal of deduction for alimony payments (enacted in the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act of 2017, enforced beginning 2019). It really screwed primary earners over in divorces.
* She filed false and frivolous violence complaint against me
* Not letting me meet my child
* Court granted overly high alimony/maintenance to her
* Lawsuits running delayed due to the pandemic
* She is failing to supply evidence for her case
* Is not even honoring prior court orders
* I have and am diligently filing everything
* Lot more has happened, above is just a summary
Yet, the system is failing to do due diligence and is so far against me nevertheless. I do have good lawyers helping.
I can connect with many comments here on the OP, some of which say that no action is taken against women even if it is proven that they were blatantly lying.
I am facing degradation of cognitive abilities due to prolonged stress, some of which seem permanent.
I am losing trust over the legal system. Marriage as a notion itself feels wrong.
I have little interest left in life other than wishing for justice and taking care of the teenage child. Thoughts of suicide come and go. I have been taking professional help.
Separately:
* I am very reputed in my circles for my honesty and talents and am seen as a role model.
* They share quotes from self-help books -- That it's all meant for good ultimately, trouble is intended by the divine to strengthen good people, it's a beautiful life after all.
* I do recognize that many people are worse off with not even food to eat.
Sorry that you are going through this, life is full of hardship, and divorce is a facet of death itself.
“ Marriage as a notion itself feels wrong.”
The notion of marriage has fractured into cultural subgroups as it has been redefined over the last century.
One of the more interesting stats to me is that young people today don’t even put children in the top ten reasons for marriage like they did just 40 years ago.
I’m wondering which of the notions of marriage you feel seem wrong.
The emotional aspects of love last about seven years. After that, pragmatics and mutual understanding need to take over. We have invented the notion of marriage and seem to have overturned what nature may have intended to be.
Marriages predate written history. I cannot be sure what led to the concept, however, I can guess.
I have read that non-monogamy is more common in the world than what most people realize.
It seems to me that when the notion of marriage was brought in, people would have needed brainwashing into it. I see several cultural aspects around marriages, some still being followed, that hint this.
Then, of course, is the welfare of the children which is critically important.
I am chosing not to write more, but have perhaps hinted upon my viewpoints on this topic.
I would tentatively say, decreasingly so. The issue, as I see it, is that although we have preventive measures and prophylactics and treatments (all imperfect), we do not yet have a culture of responsibility and building such a culture is hard.
Theoretically we could compensate for the deficiencies of our medicine, through social responsibility. In reality this does not happen. The clearest proof is the behavior of people during the Covid pandemic. Covid Zero was only achieved in a few countries. Human society is not mature enough to be responsible. Monogamy (with regards to STDs) is like social isolation for Covid and has the same strengths and weaknesses.
In the case of STDs this would mean pervasive use of testing, condoms, dental dams, etc..
Apparently the porn industry gets tested very frequently because for them an STD represents lost income. The general population not so much. When was the last time you heard of someone using a dental dam during a one night stand? It should mean a push for testing from dating apps. It would mean that someone who has an affair should actually warn the cheated partner, instead of waiting for symptoms to appear. These responsible behaviors do not happen, or at least are not as common as they should be.
As long social responsibility is not a viable solution, the only solution left is developing vaccines. On this side progress is being made, but it is slow.
If either solution is achieved, the potential for STDs becomes irrelevant in the choice of preferred *gamy.
Note that monogamy is far from foolproof. Cheating happens, a lot. Also you can get infected through means other than sex and then transmit the disease via sex.
Personally I believe humans do not hate disease enough to care. I support a strategy of genocide against harmful microbes. Nothing less than complete extermination will be satisfactory.
Thanks! I am not qualified enough to know a good answer either. Albeit I have alternative thoughts for some points you have made, you seem to know this better than I do.
To start with, I'll reiterate that I am not qualified enough here, and you seem to know more than me. :)
Since you asked still, below is my current understanding:
1. Biological evolution itself depends on spreading of genes. So the big picture cannot be an evolutionary path where having more than one partner is less optimal, whether for reasons of STD or otherwise*. Unless it is so bad that had we not picked up on monogamy, the homo sapiens population may have phased out altogether. Most species are continuing to live by nature, do not follow monogamy and are still thriving. May be we have increased our average lifespan by mitigating STD via monogamy practices, while the lifespan of animals continues at the baseline.
* I have read and noted in other comments here that emotional love between men and women lasts for about seven years. I suspect that nature purposely evolved us this way to keep the parents together when the children are very young, and once children are sufficiently grown up, the parents open themselves up to new partners.
2. In the modern times, we are more capable of solving such a challenge than we were in the ancient times. Surely, COVID challenged us, however, we have made it work out overall. (No disrespect intended for the people who have lost loved ones, suffered on health, finances, or otherwise.) If monogamy is to be taken out, more precautions would naturally come in to compensate for a negative impact of STD. We however did not have provisions for such precautions in the ancient times.
3. Likewise, while the progress for vaccines may be slow, that would not have been if we did not have the practice of monogamy. In other words, if we were to redesign things for today, we may have worked the optimal solution to be non-monogamy plus vaccines.
I do agree with 1 and I believe the influence was subtle. I also believe it might have depended on a lot of factors. Maybe some tribes were not near any animal reservoir. Maybe some diseases were transmitted due to injuries while hunting or while butchering meat. And maybe in some cases, this lead to disadvantages during inter-tribe wars. Maybe a infected tribe lost a war, their men killed and the women raped, resulting in infection of the victorious tribe and once symptoms appeared, some spiritually inclined member of the tribe blamed it on punishment for the rapes. I think it's hard to say for sure what the influence was. Probably the meme of monogamy developed as a set of superstitions initially. I think STDs would have played a role in this early stage.
According to (1) at least 3 diseases originate form animal reservoir. Once the meme of Judaism and its fork Christianity (which merges Greek values - ancient Greece and Rome were monogamous) was on the scene it was almost certainly the greatest factor in spreading the meme of monogamy. I think by the time of antiquity, STDs were no longer the main factor in spreading the meme of monogamy. Wikipedia has a nice list of historic or current communities where polygamy was the norm.
I also find your speculation about the average duration of emotional love, plausible.
I wholeheartedly agree with 2 with the small note that theoretically we could have had it easier.
I am not sure I agree with 3. Overall medicine is a very recent development. I am not sure what are the circumstances that would have enabled us to develop science and medicine significantly earlier. Also, not sure if lack of monogamy would motivate research today but probably would to a statistically relevant degree. The relationship the public and the state have with scientific research is complicated and changes over time. There is certainly a claim that there is a link between the rise of dating apps and a rise of STDs. I do not know if there are actual studies to prove this. It may be just speculation and moral panic. Theoretically this uptick might lead to more funds being directed towards finding cures. Heteronormative monogamy definitely played a role in delaying research of treatments for HIV.
(1) “Two or three of the major STIs [in humans] have come from animals. We know, for example, that gonorrhoea came from cattle to humans. Syphilis also came to humans from cattle or sheep many centuries ago, possibly sexually”. The most recent and deadliest STI to have crossed the barrier separating humans and animals has been HIV, which humans got from the simian version of the virus in chimpanzees. https://www.understandinganimalresearch.org.uk/news/staff-bl...
> I am not sure I agree with 3. Overall medicine is a very recent development. I am not sure what are the circumstances that would have enabled us to develop science and medicine significantly earlier.
I'm not suggesting that had monogamy not been there, science and medicine (for STD et al) would have developed earlier. What I am saying is that now that the means are there, monogamy and marriage have a 'legacy' element to it. That legacy is currently too deep into people's minds, culture and the law.
> Also, not sure if lack of monogamy would motivate research today but probably would to a statistically relevant degree.
Consider for minute that non-monogamy were to come to the world today suddenly like COVID did, leading to severe spread of STDs. (Note that this is not putting COVID and non-monogany on an equal front, it is putting the situation around them as equal.) My expectations would be that the needed medical developments for STD would also come by soon like the developments against COVID, though with the unwarranted transitory losses. If we are in agreement on that, we can consider a slower version where non-monogamy gains grounds over the next few decades. I think that will happen.
I want to ask you about this, in hindsight do you think it would work better for your mental health if you didn't care as much?
Like, I can read this and see that alimony is a persistent threat and reality that comes as a byproduct of being successful in my aspirations. I can just assume that it is in my future if I pursue certain kinds of relationships. 30-50% of marriages fail (the lower bound being more applicable when removing teenagers and military), and marriage contracts have shitty conditions to them. It would be a shitty contract with shitty probabilities even if only 5-10% of them failed, thats a high risk for anything with any financial component.
So I can just assume that I'll periodically file some stuff that lawyers ask for, just as a routine matter with no expectation of benefit from the legal system.
But it doesn't have to cause me any mental consternation or stress, because it isn't unexpected.
* Use social and legal provisions towards your own favor as much as possible whatever those are -- live-in relationships, friends with benefits, getting to know each other well upfront, pre-nuptial agreements, etc.
* Keep an escape route. E.g., keep finances strictly separate.
* Read 'good' books on how all this works, like on psychology of love relationships, parenting, divorce, etc.
* Need timely action as and when it is becoming bad and timely quitting. Don't go by the common guidance received which rests on inexperience and biases. Look at the statsistics and make good judgment calls. I have come across books on this too. Books sometimes give better advise than professional help (whether psychologists or lawyers) as the book author has no more ongoing vested interest once the book is sold.
In a nutshell, love yourself more than your life partner, and don't let your judgment be clouded. Read good books to build your judgment from the experiences of others.
I had found some good ones in a local library and had read them there itself while taking off from work without telling my spouse. There was no opportunity for me take these home for reading and nor create any electronic record. Life was just too tough, as you can see.
Here are some recommendations. Only the first one qualifies as a 'particular' one.
1. Human Relationships, Steve Duck. I had read the first edition and found it very insightful.
2. Another one that was very helpful was focussed on when it is the time to quit. I have linked a few similar ones below. The one I had read had a quiz after each chapter. I recall that for the first one, it said that a score of 3 out of 10 indicates your the situation is nearing borderline. (My score was 8, i.e. well past.)
3. There were several on the topic of divorce. These often include advice on the above as well.
4. There was one on how children react to such situations.
I had also read some that talked about how to save the marriage, etc.
I am (trying) doing that all along, and there is no other option anyway. So the question you have is not really applicable.
Notes on why one can't just 'not care' for mental health:
* Prior to separation, it could not be ignored as it used to happen nearly daily, which for me involved her beating herself up badly, shouting at the max of her voice, with my child also seeing all that and feeling helpless. Those around and the lawyers told me that if the wife makes any false allegation against me, I'll be doomed for a long time. And it has ultimately gone that route. (One should not ideally let it get this bad, exit timely, etc., however it is not that straightforward in practice.)
* With the lawsuits going on, there is a lot of work involved. It's more than a fulltime job in itself along with the usual fulltime job. This is because the wife just makes random false claims, which does not even require them to think. It's the defendent who has to research and file documents to show that she is making lies. Even with no expectation of benefit from the legal system, it needs to be done anyways as the situation would only be worse if not done. While in theory it's 'innocent until proven guilty', that does not mean in practice that the hard work is before the wife. The hard work is still before the husband. So even if you try to, you cannot ignore the legal work that continues and brings functional stress.
* There is a moral responsibility towards the welfare of the child. So just letting go does not fit.
* I see many men give up. They yield to the unjust and frivolous demands of the wife to avoid the above stresses. Giving up encourages more women and their unscrupolous lawyers to do the same, which would go on to make lives of other people worse. Hence, there is a moral responsibility to keep trying hard for justice for sake of others as well.
* Even if one is able to mentally let go of what is happening, there are things missing from life, which I sorely miss. Psychology research only says that it's very tough and leads to depression, etc. I have myself read a lot besides having professional help. If someone were to ask me "If you know and understand so much, are wise, how come you are still in so much pain?", my answer, because even the theory says so. Not easy to circumvent the theory!
People who get into these relationships always paint themselves as victims when everyone around them knew it was a disaster from the beginning. I just don't understand how they get there unless they willingly ignore signs of bad behavior or they think they can fix or change people. That or they're just stupid.
I have a coworker in a bad relationship that seems to be headed towards marriage. He even jokes about how he cant stand her manipulation, control and social gatekeeping yet he's still with her. I don't get it. He is good looking, educated, and living independent with a career. He can easily find someone better. But no. He has to stand in the back of the venue with her pouting about how much his favorite band sucks while they play because he invited a single girl friend along for me to meet.
> ... as victims when everyone around them knew it was a disaster from the beginning. I just don't understand how they get there unless they willingly ignore signs of bad behavior
It may also be the other way around where they saw the disaster from the beginning whereas the others around failed to but kept on applying peer pressure, where the system fails to provide a functional exit path, or when the welfare of the children points in another direction during the transition phase.
Also, things can become worse gradually whereas the decision to walk out is discrete which makes the decision hard. At what point in time does one find themselves justified to flip. I see several other areas where the same conundrum applies.
I have already written more in other comments.
> You reap what you sew
Never hold this against yourself or others without knowing the specifics and considering the entire picture. I tell this to everyone. People are genuinely victims at times for no fault of theirs. Of course, the other side is more common where people incorrectly keep blaming others.
Family member’s wife started experiencing gradually pronounced schizophrenia over a few years and she became abusive to her husband until it ended with a short stay in a mental institute and then medication. She still wonders who she was at that time…
Some people suffer diabetes as they age, and more than you would guess start experiencing mental breakdown that can manifest as abuse to a partner.
Those situations are certainly understandable and forgivable.
But there are terrible people out there who for one reason or another desire to control and manipulate their partner. They may be sick but it does not excuse or justify continuous abusive behavior.
Hindsight. I couldn’t see it until the relationship was severed. I’m not stupid, but I tried to save it up until the final day while those around us were taking bets on when it would end.
19 years of life are… poof. I missed out on doing things I think I would have liked to because of “love”.
Divorce seems to be like a stab wound people carry around for years, especially for the children of divorce.
I find it fascinating how the topic is slipped into cultural story telling. E.g. The Tomorrow War SciFi about fighting aliens in the future actually being about the hardship of divorce.
Would I be correct in guessing that you have not faced such a situation yourself?
My motivation for asking -- What you wrote is advice inexperienced people commonly give. It's nothing that those facing the challenge would not already know.
Having faced the challenge, I see several flaws / loose ends in your advice, and would recommend you or anyone reading the same to be watch out, and do your best to learn from the experiences of people who have gone through.
Keep in mind that if one is not facing the challenge, it need not be because of some special skill or wisdom they may have, but just because of chance, and vice versa.
As a divorced man, I can attest to this wholeheartedly. There's an energy a man gets when you're building a family that helps motivate through the struggle. When you get divorced, especially when kids are involved, there's an expectation in our society (court system, social pressure, etc) to continue life as if that energy still exists, it simply doesn't.
It's maddening. Breaking up a family is lose-lose. There are no winners, but men are the biggest losers.
I’m going through this right now. I’ve done everything I could to try and save the marriage. My spouse is on the warpath. We have a 2 year-old daughter. I would be willing to work on myself and expect nothing in return for the rest of my life if it meant my daughter could go to the park with her mommy and daddy together. I cannot say the smallest part of how I feel. Unyielding personal torment and failure. Breaking up a family is truly lose-lose.
I'm so sorry you're going through this. I know the feeling well. Keeping my family together was my numero uno. It drove me mad. I put myself in incredibly vulnerable positions. The thought of my kids growing up without knowing the love that brought them into this world seemed unbearable.
Looking back, while I was trying to keep my family together. She was trying to get the most out of our separation.
Once I accepted that we weren't going to be a conventional family, I was able to see things with clarity.
Accepting it is the hard part.
If you're married to someone that has experienced being in an unconventional family then this will feel a lot more normal to them, which absolutely sucks. I really feel for you man.
Sorry that you are going through this. Kids are super smart and can sense the energy very quickly. If mommy and daddy aren’t happy together, the kids will know, no matter how much you try to hide it. Also, if the parents aren’t getting along ..that isn’t a model of a good healthy relationship for the kids to experience either. Kids just need love and affection to grow into healthy and happy individuals. That love and care can exist even if the parents separated. Plus, you should choose yourself and your happiness too instead of compromising. Expecting nothing for the rest of your life isn’t a good value to pass on to your kids. Kids will like you and respect you more once they grow up if you choose yourself and your happiness! I totally understand that it’s important to give your level best to make it work and it’s an extremely tough decision to make, I am just trying to provide a different perspective. IMHO modeling healthy loving relationships is extremely important for the kids to witness as well. Wish you the best!
I have stood by a couple of friends over the years that went through really tough divorces. When you have children and the divorce is mostly forced on you it is very tough. It does funny things, as the article says. I told my friend once, with more insight than I realized at the time, something like this: “this will break you or make you something of a philosopher.” To that end I like the Stoics. A lot is out of our control. Figure out what is in your control and do your best with them (Dichotomy of control). It’s a good starting point. Sorry your family must experience this.
My sympathies, I've been there. My daughter was a teenager, though, so not so bad. In a couple of years she was grown and on her own anyway.
I know it won't make you feel any better, but when you get into your late 40s (assuming you're younger due to the age of your daughter) it will dawn on you that there's nothing you could have done differently, it's not anyone's fault.
The cruel joke of life is that you don't know what to do until middle-age, and by then you have the briefest of moments to make the most of it because your physical / mental endurance is on borrowed time at that point. That sounds work-related, but the same things apply to people's social lives too. They don't recognize their compulsive behaviors and mistakes until they're old enough to know better. Some never do.
I went through this, and it helped to vent (and ask advice) on r/divorce. You'll get honest answers if you ask for them. Also, I visited a therapist to guide me through the process. Regardless, I agree it's truly lose-lose right now -- it may very well change. You will make it through, because it's your daughter. Keep pressing on.
I’m so sorry you’re going through this. No matter what, you can still have a great life and be a great father, though. Maybe not as tidy, but still beautiful.
It may sounds trite but I believe you will look back one day and realise this was just a step on the road, painful as it is now.
I suggest you hang in there until then, and do your utmost (swallowing whatever shit is necessary) to stay in good terms with your ex - for your daughter's sake.
I appreciate that you've been through a difficult experience. HN users are welcome to share their experiences here. However, it's not ok to translate the emotion from the experience into flamewar comments. That's the problem with this one: you swerved into generic gender war rhetoric. That's harmful and not ok here.
Of course it can be very difficult not to leap from painful experience to dramatic generalization. But it's the sort of thing we all have to work on in order to have HN be the kind of community we're trying for: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
When the child support ends a lot of power the state grants women to tear apart a mans life also evaporates. There's a possibility of a silver lining when child support ends. Divorced men need to remember that. Often times its the very start of men resuming a relationship with the children they've been blocked from seeing for all those years.
If men comtemplating suicide could realise this and see it as the light at the end of the very dark tunnel then they might keep their faith in themselves and their future.
I think that’s a truism that more people need to hear… “This, too, shall pass.”
I was struggling with identity and responsibility when the kids were young and and extremely helpful person on a forum told me that my life would not forever be “swamped husband supporting family with young kids”…or even “parents in a faily of four”…sure I’m still a father of two kids, but they’re off doing their own things and my relationship with my wife is a LOT more like the one I had as a couple, before being parents.
But that's not a random sample. Given the widely perceived bias against men, one would expect only the men with the strongest cases to try for custody, and you would expect them to have better outcomes than average men.
If as an experiment you randomly selected a group of men and got them to file for custody, their success rate would probably be lower.
> Given the widely perceived bias against men, one would expect only the men with the strongest cases to try for custody, and you would expect them to have better outcomes than average men.
Actually, even on close-to-even odds, men don't try anyway (losing has a much larger effect if you're a man). See my response in this thread elsewhere for why I declined to fight when my estimated odds were 3/5.
If it gets ugly the bias in favor of women gets stronger.
All of this is anedoctal but in my experience I saw many women willing to use false accusations of violence knowing it was a win win. They knew they wouldn't be punished even if it was proven the accusations were false. And that is a powerful tool to get custody.
And of course for younger children the custody to the mother is often enshrined into law directly.
Yes unfortunately you cannot protect group A from the actions of group B hermetically without hurting group B, if group A and group B interact.
Someone will be hurt, or by the actions of a member of the second group or by the societal actions to protect the second group.
I just wish the compromise was clear and we abandoned the kind of puritanical thinking that we "ought to protect group X" no matter what. We need to talk, qualitatively and quantitatively, about all the sides of the coin.
> If men file for custody they get 50/50. Men who ask for full custody also statistically win more often.
You're pulling that statistic from where? At least from the US census bureau, here are the stats from 2002 that go all the way back to 1994 [1]: "In the spring of 2002, an estimated 13.4 million parents had custody of 21.5 million children under 21 years of age whose other parent lived somewhere else. About 5 of every 6 custodial parents were mothers (84.4 percent) and 1 in 6 were fathers (15.6 percent), proportions statistically unchanged since 1994 (Table A). Overall, 27.6 percent of all children under 21 living in families had a parent not living in the home."
The statistics you cite are related, but doesn't refute the point that men who ask for full custody win more often. I don't know if that's true or not, but it can be true and also only 1/6 custodial parents being fathers can be true. It simply requires that significantly fewer men ask for full custody.
> If men file for custody they get 50/50. Men who ask for full custody also statistically win more often.
That's a nice statistic. Where did you get it?
> You are doing disservice to both kids and men when you tell them they cant have it.
Well I apologise for that, every lawyer I spoke to during my divorce (maybe ... 10?) said not to bother, the odds of a court deciding in favour of the mother were 3/5.
Not bothering to file because of a 3/5 chance of losing seems crazy. It's actually pretty hard to tell 60/40 apart from 50/50, especially if there's lots of covariates.
> Not bothering to file because of a 3/5 chance of losing seems crazy. It's actually pretty hard to tell 60/40 apart from 50/50, especially if there's lots of covariates.
It only seems like that because you're looking at the raw numbers. When you look at the actual stakes, it's quite different.
Let's say we play a coin-toss game: Each time I win the toss, I give you $1. Each time you win the toss, you give me $100.
Would you play? Think it's not fair? Okay, lets make it fair.
Each time you win, you win $1m. Each time you lose, you pay $1m. Would you play against me (I'm not rich)? Would you agree to play against Bill Gates/Jeff Bezos/etc?
It's not just the odds that matters, it's the fact t, even on even odds, in some cases you stand to lose much more than the opposing side.
> That is completely absurd risk reward ratio to reject.
Not really. The impact of losing is "lose hundreds of thousands, be in debt for the next decade and have my work (and life in general) suffer", while still having to deal with having to then fight for access continuously.
The impact of winning was "losing hundreds of thousands, be in debt for a decade, and still have the risk of custody reversal in a future case".
The only winning move here is not to play[1] unless the odds are greatly in your favour - it's cheaper for the female so the female's impact in a win or a lose is substantially less.
Regardless of the risk/reward ratio, when 10 lawyers tell you not to bother, you'd be stupid to ignore their advice.
In any case, I still want to now where you got your statistics from.
[1] All I had to deal with after that was to enforce the contact. That took 3 court cases (luckily, all in my favour).
But women file for custody. Multiple states already have 50/50 being default custody.
Also, filing does not costs "hundreds of thousands". That is just not true. Poor people have those hearings and while it costs money, it costs significantly less.
Where are your 10 lawyers stats from? You realize that lawyers can just be repeating the same thing they found on google? Which could simply be a quote from a forum like this one.
This discussion requires the same standards for all arguments, and no appeals to authority.
Well said. I’m a decade past my divorce and it still causes anguish. I have two kids and while I play by the rules and encourage the kids to be close to both myself and their mother. Their mom is on man in her life number 6/husband 2. There was a period of time that she told the kids to call me dad and the step dad “super dad”. She nearly ran me over twice without warning as I jogged.
I’ve never contested child support audits despite my income halving recently. Even knowing what I went through I’m not sure I would have made a different choice. My main worry is my kids and making sure they are ok is pretty much the reason I wake up in the morning. I certainly don’t claim to be blameless in the divorce but having my ex and her mothers psychiatrist break protocol and tell me without charging me that I should leave along with refusing to see them anymore raised some flags. Mental illness got worse
From there.
You deserve to be happy too. The best thing you can do for your kids is to be a active, happy, and confident caregiver. Even if you're flat broke these qualities will rub off on your kids and do more for them throughout their lives than any amount of child support.
Are they? At least among wealthy men, it seems much more common for them to remarry and make a brand new second family while the ex wife is left doing most things for the first set of kids. Plus, it’s significantly more common for men to leave their wives when their wives get diagnosed with cancer than vice versa.
IMO, divorce sucks worst for whoever is the most conscientious person and invested in the family, regardless of gender.
PS - I am divorced too (no kids though) - sorry to hear you’re going through that.
> At least among wealthy men, it seems much more common for them to remarry and make a brand new second family while the ex wife is left doing most things for the first set of kids.
Wealth changes the equation. When you are certain that you can look after your kids indefinitely or for a sufficient amount of time you can go on with your life, take a sabbatical, or whatever floats your boat. You don't need the same energy GP mentioned as someone who needs to work from 9 to 5 the next day after the divorce.
Yeah, that does seem to be true, not that I have particular expertise on that. Sorry that you’ve had to experience that firsthand and I hope things get better for you. I think men and women have their unique challenge “clusters” with divorce (though they are tendencies, not the rule) and custody seems to be a rough one for men.
Fwiw, the large majority (~70%) of divorces are initiated by women in the US. Most divorces are not caused by cancer, and the advantage men have in re-marrying later are known and appreciated. So I think we can take the fact that most divorces are initiated by women as prima facie evidence that women recover better from divorces.
It could equally be seen as evidence that staying in a bad marriage is worse for women than for men, so women will risk more to escape that scenario.
(Presumably people file because they expect a better life outcome for themselves from divorce than from not divorcing. This could be because they expect a better outcome due to divorce, as you say; or that they expect a worse outcome if they don't divorce, which is my alternative possible interpretation. I'm neutral on which is actually the case.)
Suppose a guy and a girl married are both 5/10 in happiness, and that if they divorce they will be 2/10 in happiness for five years, then will recover.
Scenario 1
The woman and the man expect their happiness in marriage to stay around 5/10.
After five years of divorce they have recovered a bit, but the woman recovers more and is now 6/10 but the man is 4/10.
Scenario 2
An alternative is that even though they are both 5/10 in happiness to start with, the woman's expected future happiness in the marriage after five years is only 3/10 while the man's is still 5/10.
Suppose they divorce and both recover the same to 4/10 after five years.
Analysis
In both scenarios after five years the woman will be happier if she divorces, and it may make sense for her to file for divorce depending on her risk tolerance.
Woman filing for divorce more could be evidence for scenario 1, which is my interpretation of your post. It could also be evidence for scenario 2, which is incompatible with your interpretation. It is not so simple to say that more filing is evidence for a better recovery for women.
> Woman filing for divorce more could be evidence for scenario 1, which is my interpretation of your post.
This is not what I intended. I was just trying to counter the suggestion by me_im_counting that men are likely to do better following divorce because of reasons like (according to him) men find it easier to remarry, women are more likely to keep the kids, and men divorce in response to cancer. All of those, as explanations, are in tension with the fact that men are less likely to be initiating divorce.
So following a divorce there are a number of factors that affect people's long term happiness: possibility of remarrying, quality of time spent to kids, amount of income lost due to childcare and amount of income paid to ex-spouse, and so on.
We can assume overall these tend to impact men and women differently, with for example women tending to get more access to kids but losing income as they spend time on childcare, and men tending to pay more to their ex-wives and losing time with the kids.
You argue that women gain more from divorce than men overall as women are the ones who file for divorce in the majority of cases.
Let's accept for the sake of argument that women do relatively better out of divorces all things considered. The explanation for this could be good post-divorce outcomes for women, which are the factors above such as ease of remarrying or custody. This is what I see as the core of your argument.
An alternative explanation might be that in a bad marriage, women are in a particularly vulnerable position relative to men. In that case even with worse outcomes from divorce for women, it might still make sense for women to file for divorce more often.
I think it would be hard to find convincing evidence either way. But it's plausible the tension may just be apparent and there is another explanation.
> In that case even with worse outcomes from divorce for women, it might still make sense for women to file for divorce more often.
I don't understand. If bad marriages effect women more often then men, then women do better from divorce. The divorce initiation data doesn't tell us who's happier overall (insofar as such interpersonal utility comparisons even make sense), and I didn't make a claim about this. That data point only tell us who expects to benefit from divorce relative to where they are.
I think you're arguing against a position I don't have.
Agreed on the data point likely showing a greater expected benefit relative to where they are.
It wouldn't exactly show that women "recover better" versus men, which was your original wording, but that is not perhaps the most important point - I'm more trying to tease out nuance than argue against you.
One factor confusing the issue is that a number of reasons mentioned in the thread, such as cancer, remarriage, and access to children, are not particularly relevant to your argument.
The original post of this thread said divorce was lose-lose and that men are the biggest losers. My point, perhaps clumsily made, was that it is possible that some men take advantage of a relatively strong position in a bad marriage. So even though they lose from the divorce itself more, the increased initiation from women may partly represent a relative weakness within the marriage leading to women losing more in a bad marriage prior to initiating divorce (and men gambling that they won't divorce due to the costs involved).
That still feels clumsily expressed, but I hope you can understand where I'm coming from. Again it's an attempt to add a little more nuance to the overall analysis here.
It’s interesting how my comment seems to be taken as an assertion in the opposite direction: that women have it categorically worse in divorce. I believe that reality is much, much more nuanced than either “direction”.
That being said, who files is not a perfect signal. I know a few women who filed when it was in reality the husband who ended the marriage.
No one is making categorical claims, nor is any signal perfect. But you questioned whether men are worse hit by divorce, and I offered some evidence that they are.
>So I think we can take the fact that most divorces are initiated by women as prima facie evidence that women recover better from divorces.
That's a pretty big assumption, especially considering how irrational many people are when it comes to divorce.
Personally, I've always assumed the discrepancy was caused by women's higher standards and belief that they can get a better man that "treats them right". I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was completely wrong, though.
Women are happier after divorce. Men are more lonely. Men find new partner sooner, women tend to stay single. Men do better financially after divorce and women worst - despite HN claims of divorce destroying men financially. (I think the last point has to do with who has to pick children from school and be with them day to day).
It seems that marriage as is is not working for women while works for men. Women then tend to end it.
> At least among wealthy men, it seems much more common for them to remarry and make a brand new second family while the ex wife is left doing most things for the first set of kids.
Your mistake here is conflating what the 1% do with the rest of the world. Its like looking at the richest people in hte world, deciding that they're all men so there must be a patriarchy and that all men are rich. Nowhere near close to the truth.
> Plus, it’s significantly more common for men to leave their wives when their wives get diagnosed with cancer than vice versa.
Citation definitely needed. At least anecdotally, women seem to be just as capable of leaving a sick spouse as men and in fact are supported by society for doing so more than a man in a similar situation.
Most divorces are initiated by women. Nowadays, there's an unacceptably high likelihood of divorce within 10 years of marriage. Should it occur, there are significant long term legal and economic repercussions.
I simply don't understand why anyone would ever propose marriage in the first place under these circumstances, let alone remarry after experiencing divorce.
> men are financially better after divorce women worst.
Does that take into account how much work both are putting in towards earning? Or it's just considering the net numbers? Women may be worse financially looking at just the numbers, however, may still be ahead when their efforts into earning are taken in account. Or when the damages they did are properly taken into account for determining what the position of justice should be.
> Reading statistics, on average, men are financially better after divorce women worst
How is financially better calculated? Things like child support and alimony seem to not be counted for a lot of purposes - like tax - so the woman could be poorer on paper while actually having more money in practice.
Afaik, they are counted in. Also, alimony are not as frequent as legend has it. Nor they last to infinity.
Being primary caregiver, even with child support financially costs quite a lot. Not just in direct expenses, but also in job opportunities and in terms of what jobs you can have, how you can progress on the ladder.
Not only this but the cancer related statistics is oddly specific, and chose only because it put men in a bad light. Without numbers (count and percentage) caused by this plus the ventilation by sex it's totally meaningless: the affirmation could be true with only three divorces a year where two men leave and one woman does.
On the reverse, men being taken half of their wealth plus having a pension to pay is the overwhelming majority of cases (even when both are working) in the majority of Western countries. And one never reads any story about a woman becoming homeless or killing herself after a divorce while those stories are numerous on the male side...
I actually am quite sympathetic to challenges facing men, and agree that many don’t seem to care. For example, the utter lack of sympathy for male victims of marital infidelity is mind blowing to me. Women tend to be supported when their husband cheats on them, and men tend to be blamed and viewed as responsible when their wife cheats. I was simply pointing out observations counter to the assertion that men categorically have it worse in divorce, and did not come to a conclusion in either direction. There is too much gender based vitriol in general in these situations. The truth is there are sociopathic, selfish, narcissistic, etc people of both genders and ultimately that callous quality is the salient one in the cases I’ve seen, not gender.
Agree, I am astonished to see the double standard when women cheat vs men : https://youtu.be/qOTe0_Z0vlc
If Will Smith was trying to justify cheating on his wife to feel "happy" he would have been cancelled by Hollywood.
Women lie in court all the time and lawyers will tell you that in Civil Court there is nothing you can do. These psychos will file dozens of "motions" then immediately drop them in an endless barrage of pointless litigation just to harass husbands into submission.
An entire industry exists just to bleed families dry by getting women to claim abuse (mental abuse is enough) to get the kids, 1/2 the man's stuff and a steady income. The entire "civil court" legal system is broken in the US. It is what Trump specialized in, civil court cases just to fu*k with people and bully them into getting what he wanted.
Unfortunately, there is absolutely no risk of jail time if a women makes false abuse allegation (either abuse towards her or towards the kids). On the other hand it is a common practice advised by unscrupulous lawyers to get rid of the dad and get full custody by getting a temporary restraining order (it is called the "silver bullet").
A recent story where it happened to a dad, who eventually got killed by the father in law : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_z0AfxT2bE
No coverage or sympathy from either the media or the politics.
Divorce is considerably easier for a childless couple. At least as long as the couple manages to be reasonably civil to each other. That doesn't make it "easy", but it is "easier" to not have a bond keeping you attached to the former spouse forever.
My ex and I managed to share joint custody of our dog for years, until she moved away and we decided she should keep the dog. Much harder to do that with a child.
I went through this but with a child in the US. My ex wife decided to move away 3,000 miles away with our child. I spent a year fighting in court and spend $150k+ in lawyers fees. Being a man with a child under 6 y/o, you have almost no chance to block a mom to move away with the kid across the country. Most men think it won't happen to them, until their wife decides that "she's not happy".
Even though the workforce is changing, the family law is still stuck in the 1960's, considering the dad as the breadwinner and the mom as the caregiver. Watch the movie marriage story.
I don't agree that men are always the biggest losers. I have friends who are women who have fared so much worse than their male partners for a variety of reasons. I do believe though that (at least in my bubble of the world) it's generally thought that men are the winners, so when you're the loser, it's fairly isolating and lacking of any sympathy or concern in a situation that can be absolutely crushing. If you want support, you're likely not going to get it unless you have close family or friends who care enough to see past unfortunate social norms and simply care about you.
If you involve kids, I think it gets quite a bit worse here. My experience has been that family law is mostly a level playing field, but mothers still have the upper hand. This again is something which no one really cares about or will do anything about; you have to suck it up and carry on. There is no way around it.
There's a reason "divorced dad" is an identifiable aesthetic. It's treated as a meme, but the very point is that the loss of something that basically grounded a person's life for years is almost irreparable.
>There are no winners, but men are the biggest losers.
Whether or not this is true in the statistical sense, I don't think it's a really useful piece of information. Everyone's relationship is different, as are the ways they react and cope (or don't) with it ending.
On infidelity - to some extent people's personal business is not my business.
But if I hear that someone was unfaithful to their spouse, my business trust in them goes waaay down.
If they're willing to break trust with the person closest to them in their life, what chance do I have as a mere business partner of not being screwed over at some point?
> But if I hear that someone was unfaithful to their spouse, my business trust in them goes waaay down.
Same here. I actually don't know why it doesn't seem to affect people's thoughts about politicians. People are absolutely willing to separate what they know about a person's personal life from what they think about that person's politics.
For me it's a scarlet letter. I get maybe an hour of talk about each candidate when there's an election, and it's one-way. I don't get to ask them anything, I just get told some mix of what they say and what the news says. Why would I trust someone who has demonstrated untrustworthiness to the one person they've spent the most time with?
I just don't get why people are so willing to create a business box-of-facts and a personal-box-of-facts when they discover something like this. Fact is business relationships are personal. You even do the same things when you're meeting business partners for heavens sake: One of you invites the other out and pays for it. You go for a meal or a drink. You go to gatherings together. Ghosting each other (LOL).
Nothing to say about cheating or personal relationships but it helps to be able to compartmentalise in some cases.
There’s a person on HN who comments frequently. Very level headed, measured, informative comments. Always tries to lower the temperature of discussions. Very refreshing to read their comments.
I followed them on Twitter and found a very different approach. It felt like two different people. But honestly they were able to compartmentalise these two personas and it worked.
I figured I should probably compartmentalise too. I wouldn’t invite the Twitter persona to a technical discussion but I would invite the HN persona. And as long as only the HN persona showed up, what does it matter to me what the Twitter persona does on the weekend?
> Why would I trust someone who has demonstrated untrustworthiness to the one person they've spent the most time with?
That's a bit like expecting someone to be mean to you because they're mean to their brother. Close relationships are often conducted in a manner far different to other relationships. What if the person wants some space but the other doesn't give any? What if their spouse is mean but they put up with it because they have children? There could be a hundred reasons.
Above all though, life is complicated, and in the case of politicians the field is often limited (by those with real power) to one liar who might be less worse than another liar. I'm actually surprised that people pick so well given these constraints.
I don’t know. What if the partner is a bad, manipulative actor, but it is just too difficult to dissolve the marriage? For the sake of children, financial commitments, costs, unfair legacy laws and so on?
It’s certainly not unheard of, so I’ll keep sweeping personality assessments based on cheating at bay.
There’s clearly also other reasons, I’m not saying cheating partners are always poor martyrs of circumstance.
Technically everything can be used to establish a (operational) perception of a person — and everything can be wrong. Someone wears a Rolex? Maybe they are rich and want to show off, maybe they inherited it from a dying family member. If they however additionally drive a super car, wear designer clothes the likelyhood of alternative explainations goes down.
If someone is a nice, cordial and all around good person and you hear they cheated on their wife you might give them the benefit of the doubt for a moment. If someone behaves like the person who would cheat you now have the smoking gun.
Why do egoists cheat on people? Because they don't care.
Why do good people cheat?
Because their relationship didn't provide them with something they needed and they weren't able to either communicate their needs properly to their partners or end the relationship.
The most enlightening bit I read online on this subject was that of a serial cheater who held no remorse for doing so. Her attitude was basically something like:
> Hey, I love him and if he doesn't know it doesn't hurt him and if I ask for permission not only will it hurt him, but he won't give it to me anyway. So I'll just lie to him.
Which kinda blew my mind. I understand cheating as a I-messed-up thing or as a my-partner-literally-and-believably-threatened-suicide-if-I-left-them thing but an ongoing, decades long deception? Man. That's wild.
That sounds like a personality disorder which is why you should thoroughly vet a long term partner and screen for personality disorders early on in a relationship. I hope the husband finds out and recovers from the betrayal.
> Hey, I love him and if he doesn't know it doesn't hurt him and if I ask for permission not only will it hurt him, but he won't give it to me anyway. So I'll just lie to him.
I used to knew someone like this. "Love and sex are different, separate things." It taught me to be more guarded about who I associate with.
I think it’s the case where I would put more weight on what you label as confirmatory signals than the infidelity itself. My key concern about a cheating asshole is that they’re an asshole.
Cheating on someone is just such a noisy signal. You don’t know why, or what’s wrong with the relationship. You mostly don’t know who is cheating, at best you have a biased sample. You don’t know what they are like to their parents or children, or frankly even their partners - are they loyal to them in other ways, caring for them when they need it?
Relationships are super complicated and judging them from outside takes a psychology degree and extra training. I’m not going to jump to conclusions from a Boolean variable.
> I’m not going to jump to conclusions from a Boolean variable.
Agreed, I wouldn't either.
However the point of my comment was to explain that the variables rarely are boolean and never come in isolation (unless someone talks to you about someone else whom you never even heard of).
For me all these traits don't necessarily mean anything. You can like children and pets and still be a mass murderer, you can hate children and pets and be the most honest, most cordial person on earth.
When using outside traits to form an image about people your confidence in that image should never be exceptionally high. However cheating is not an outside trait, it is behavior.
A single imstance of observed behavior will still not say much. But at some point the confidence raises. If a stranger yells once at the waitress that adds one data point with low confidence to my list. If I cannot judge the situation because I didn't see what it was about that confidence might be close to nonexistent. Even if I fully recognize the situation I still can't be totally confident, maybe the guy has a bad day, maybe he has a history with the waitress etc.
However if I see the same guy being mean to different people for a prolonged period of time, my confidence in all other explainations will naturally fall and my confidence in the theory that the guy is mean will rise.
That doesn't mean the guy is an asshole everywhere in his life. Maybe he is super caring with his kids or old mother etc.
While I agree in principle I still feel there are situations where one side is so disrespectful and or destructive, that despite all vows they can no longer expect unbroken loyalty of their partner.
Don't get me wrong, two wrongs never make a right, but the reasons why people behave the way they do tell more about a person than their actual behavior. Cheating is never right, but sometimes what it tells you about the person is more them being a tragic person than a bad person. It depends.
> But if I hear that someone was unfaithful to their spouse, my business trust in them goes waaay down.
> If they're willing to break trust with the person closest to them in their life, what chance do I have as a mere business partner of not being screwed over at some point?
That's a very American perspective. People position on extramarital affair is extremely culturaly dependant.
It goes from deep public revulsion despite statitics showing people massively cheat in the extremely puritanical USA to silent acceptance in a "what I don't know don't hurt me" in part of Europe.
People business life and private life are not the same things. I would avoid making too many black-and-white extreme judgments based on things you necessarily have a very narrow view.
No, it’s not a uniquely American perspective. Generally humans (not all) value things like fairness and truth. Many will toss those to the side in the pursuit of things like money and power, but it’s pretty universal that screwing people over is viewed poorly.
The thing is in many cultures, or social groups, extra-marital affairs (usually for men) are normalised and accepted. It's simply not seen as a trust or fairness issue. And yes this can be mysogynistic and abusive, but these attitudes do exist.
> I live in one of those cultures today and I’d emphasize the “tolerated” part. Not that dissimilar to physically hitting your spouse.
It has absolutely nothing in common with hitting your spouse. It is extremely frowned upon to openly display it but relatively accepted if it's discreet. It's very correlated to the relation a population has to sex. People in very religious countries where sex is seen as moraly dubious have very strong view against infidelity and people in countries with a more casual view of sex don't think it's such a big deal.
France is a relatively extreme example. The last Pew Research Center study shows that only 47% of the French thinks that infidelity is moraly unacceptable and there is no large gap between women and men answers.
If it's culturally acceptable, a wink wink nudge nudge that both partners understand, it's not cheating since no trust is really broken. It's just an open relationship, who cares.
It's definitely cheating and the partner cheated upon might not find it acceptable at all. Everyone would understand someone divorcing because they were cheated upon.
It's just not seen as morally disqualifying. People view cheating as a mostly private matter and acknowledge it happens. When it was revealed that the former president was having an affair with an actress, it barely impacted his popularity.
Sure, fair enough, but it's not generally seen as anything to do with e.g. reliability as a business partner. I used to do a lot of work in parts of the world like this.
That I could understand, and that’s where my comment on domestic violence comes from. Plenty of people might slap their wife around but that’s not seen as disqualifying for a business relationship.
We could use a bit less wildly inaccurate stereotypes than "extremely puritanical USA". Please consider updating your views of our country from the 18th Century. Imagine if I went around ranting about "extremely Catholic France".
In my experience, such attitudes leave a hefty footprint on the culture -- or if you prefer, take much longer to shake off than the regime that bred them, religious in this case.
In Europe you can still very clearly see which countries have a protestant, "work hard or go to hell" attitude to life, and which have an, oddly, Catholic "let's enjoy life and see how it goes" approach. Religion participation rates have dwindled away in Western Europe for sure, since WWII if not before.
Sure, but there is a difference between "being influenced by puritan culture along with many other historical forces" and "extremely puritan nation".
I'm also not so sure about the accuracy of your Catholic stereotypes. The greatest German industry and wealth is in the Catholic south ("upper Germany"), for example, and not in the Protestant North or Northeast. Similarly there are huge differences between Northern and Southern Italy yet both are Catholic, so I don't think it's religion that is the difference maker when comparing, say, Germany and Italy's productivity and work habits.
Well, for one, I'm not claiming that religious affiliation is a sole determinant of future success. Also, Prussia was subsequently steam-rolled by the USSR machine. But compare general attitudes in France, Italy, Spain vs. Netherlands and the Nordics. Or Austria vs. Germany.
I think the overall point is quite valid. If you look at a whole host of societal norms in the US, they will be quite puritanical, compared to a bunch of [formerly] Catholic places, even though the US is far more socially liberal than many (most?) Catholic countries.
You can always argue about what words to use to quantify, is it "extremely" puritan or merely "strongly influenced", not sure this can lead anywhere.
> If you look at a whole host of societal norms in the US, they will be quite puritanical
Honestly, I don't see this and think it's both bad history and bad social commentary. Cities all across the country let people walk into a store and steal whatever they want without prosecution. Homeless people defecating in city squares. Higher levels of corruption and bribery than in Europe. Much more more crime and lawlessness than in Europe. Certainly doesn't seem puritanical to me.
Yes, there were puritans in New England. But also tobacco farmers in Virginia, Cavaliers, and Scotch-Irish and border English in the South, and the Spanish Catholic settlers in California and Florida. Incidentally the first European settlement of the US was Spanish Catholics. And then of course waves of primarily Catholic immigrants from Europe in the 1920s and the current wave of primarily Catholic immigrants from Latin America.
It might be interesting to note that historically the U.S. was viewed (by Europeans) as a corrupt, lawless country, made wealthy by enormous land/person ratios. It was only after WW1 that the U.S. began to flex its economic power but it still maintained a "gangster" reputation, and in fact was the home of many world famous gangsters and scoundrels, together with grifting machine politics in all the major urban cities from Boston's Irish machine that gave us the Kennedy dynasty to Huey Long's machine in the South and virtually everything in between. Puritan was simply not the first word that came to mind in any meaningful description of the U.S. dating from the 19th century onwards.
I don't really want to be arguing this point anymore. But some things are maybe worth pointing out.
One, I think in modern use "puritanical" doesn't really mean literally specific to the Puritans. They were a fringe group even in their heyday. Rather, it's a wider characterisation of certain protestant churches, Lutheran and Calvinist come to mind too. These emphasise a hard work ethos, education, and de-emphasise "earthly pleasures" in whatever guise. Certainly that's how I [ab]use it in this context.
So yes, while actual Puritans were a small fraction of the US melting pot, plenty of conservative protestants joined them. In this [1] Wikipedia table, you can see US population in 1790. If you narrow focus to Europeans, you're hard-pressed to find any Catholics there! Ulster Scottish/Irish are protestant, Germans may include some Catholics, then there's the French and that's it.
> It might be interesting to note that historically the U.S. was viewed (by Europeans) as a corrupt, lawless country
I couldn't help but think that the US gangs (at least those that made it to popular culture) were Italian and Irish.
> Honestly, I don't see this and think it's both bad history and bad social commentary.
Texas just made abortion illegal. There was a huge scandal because someone inadvertently displayed a nipple on live television. The definition of nudity includes showing a mere breast. A majority of people think you can’t be moral if you don’t believe in god. People regularly swear on the bible in court.
> but it still maintained a "gangster" reputation
Because it made alcohol consumption illegal out of a rigorous conception of moral purity.
The USA remains heavily influenced by the puritain ideas in its culture. Far more than a country like France where 70% of the population says they are not religious and 29% say they don’t believe at all.
Agreed. It certainly doesn't demonstrate honesty or integrity, qualities which I value. While I'm sure plenty of adulterous people have made fine business partners... I'll take mine without, thanks.
If you wanted to defend laws against jaywalking then perhaps it would best to back it up with something other than an appeal to emotion, and - on HN of all places - an appeal against using scientific research.
I'm impressed how you jumped from me using a reasonable commonsense estimate (deceptive people tend to be less trustworthy) to conclusion that I must be anti-science.
Reminds of the droning crowds who claimed in March 2020 that masks don't work "because there is no supporting research".
Cheating on a spouse has nothing to do with deception, it only becomes deception if they don't tell their spouse about it afterwards. If a person did cheat on their spouse and told their spouse about it then that is a sign to me that I can trust what the person say. I wont be able to trust that they can control themselves in the moment, but at least I'll trust that they will tell me about important things.
So you wouldn’t be angry if they screwed you in a business deal by lying to you as long as they told you about it after the damage was done? The only way a cheater could be ethical about cheating is to inform their spouse about it before it happens and give them an opportunity to approve, divorce, or discuss.
What am I supposed to take from that? That you're for the use of scientific research here?
> Reminds of the droning crowds who claimed in March 2020 that masks don't work "because there is no supporting research".
Since you brought it up, maybe if you supported looking into the research more often you'd be aware of how little supporting evidence there is - not research, there's been research but it has failed to find the evidence you seem to believe exists.
From[1]:
> This recent crop of trials added 9,112 participants to the total randomised denominator of 13,259 and showed that masks alone have no significant effect in interrupting the spread of ILI or influenza in the general population, nor in healthcare workers.
> It would appear that despite two decades of pandemic preparedness, there is considerable uncertainty as to the value of wearing masks.
From[2]:
> Evidence from 14 trials on the use of masks vs. no masks was disappointing: it showed no effect in either healthcare workers or in community settings. We could also find no evidence of a difference between the N95 and other types of masks but the trials comparing the two had not been carried in aerosol-generating procedures.
> But what of the folk walking down the road, going to the supermarket or watching the ducks in the pond?
> The answer is simple: we do not know.
From[3]:
> Unlike other studies looking at masks, the Danmask study was a randomised controlled trial – making it the highest quality scientific evidence.
> In the end, there was no statistically significant difference between those who wore masks and those who did not when it came to being infected by Covid-19.
> When it comes to masks, it appears there is still little good evidence they prevent the spread of airborne diseases. The results of the Danmask-19 trial mirror other reviews into influenza-like illnesses.
> But overall, there is a troubling lack of robust evidence on face masks and Covid-19.
They go on but I think that's enough, even for someone who appears to abhor research as much as you. If that's not the case then I suggest making yourself clearer in future rather than trying to pass off the blame through straw man responses.
Oh wow so you're an antimasker too, didn't have that on my bingo card. Thing is I did wonder how last years WHO-antimaskers cope with the advise reversal. Now I see they didn't.
We found that communities with high reported mask-wearing and physical distancing had the highest predicted probability of transmission control.
Not a shocker really given how all successful containment measures over the pandemic did include masks (same for earlier SARS outbreaks). And we literally had a hundred years worth of practice using masks for airborne transmission diseases to draw conclusions from.
> What am I supposed to take from that?
That it's entirely possible to use common sense to gauge everyday risks without demanding a peer reviewed study. Crossing into traffic is dangerous. Mechanical barriers help catch particles. Deceptive people are less trustworthy. A formal study would often quantify that, but coming to opposite conclusion than common sense concept happens very infrequently and then usually warrant a replication study.
However the dynamic with online peertards is they use proof requests as an attempt to shut down the discussion, knowing all well that finding supporting research (which often does exist!) in unfamiliar field is a lot of work. When people object to that, the perfect trifecta of cookie-cutter strawman, ad-hominem and non-sequitir accusation follows.
In our case you didn't seem to bother looking for peer reviewed research that cheaters are more (or even just as ) trustworthy as baseline, which would be a really remarkable, counter-intuitive result worth sharing. Nope, you'd rather latch on an entirely reasonable comment and insist that not playing along with your foolishness is anti-intillectualism.
> That it's entirely possible to use common sense to gauge everyday risks without demanding a peer reviewed study.
It's also entirely possible to be wrong, and divorce or being cheated on is not an "everyday" risk, hence the challenge you encountered.
> In our case you didn't seem to bother looking for peer reviewed research that cheaters are more (or even just as ) trustworthy as baseline
Why should I need to? I know you want to make this personal as you keep engaging in rudeness and ad hominem but it's got nothing to do with your claim, and I'm not making a claim.
Just try backing it up instead of deflecting and being rude.
As to your study in the Lancet, did you read it? Even glance across it?
> Methods
> Serial cross-sectional surveys were administered via a web platform to randomly surveyed US individuals aged 13 years and older, to query self-reports of face mask-wearing.
Amusing. I really think you should read the articles written by the esteemed epidemiologists I supplied, especially where they talk about what makes a good study.
Non sequitur; a better question would be “do you consult psyarxiv every time jaywalking is discussed”. This site being the kind of place it is: https://psyarxiv.com/yfsed/
Back to the topic, I found this interesting, though I am unqualified to judge it and only read abstract and conclusion: https://psyarxiv.com/2stcv/
Your view seems so incredibly judgemental to me. I suppose that's your right, but in my own experience, plenty of people have personal struggles while being very successful at business. I think it is also a view that is uncomfortably similar to those who discriminate, justifying it on their own moral (usually religious based) code.
This. I had a therapist who cheated on his wife and got divorced. He was a shitbag that in retrospect set back many parts of my mental health for years.
I've come to see that people are far more complex than what you may think, and that complexity arises from a process of self discovery.
To address your point, the cheating could have arisen from emotional issues that hadn't been consciously acknowledged and couldn't be addressed until after the cheating occurred. If that person goes through therapy and deals with their dysfunction I'd suggest it was a transformative process and you're not dealing with the same person who cheated.
To what degree should you make someone pay for something they didn't do to you?
Haven't you made mistakes and learnt from them and grown as a human?
All I'm suggesting is to be very cautious about passing character judgement on others based on old data. You may be fine with the false positives but it's a lagging indicator at best.
But how do you know it was unfaithful? Lots of open relationships don’t broadcast this fact due to the stigma and taboo around it. Plus, OP said they’d go on hearsay.
So the cheating got around ears but the open relationship wouldn't? What a strange selectively gossipy community. I'd think people would normally cover up both as they are personal, but all shit can get out.
it's not very hard to imagine a scenario where the extramarital activities could leak without the knowledge of the open relationship (e.g., someone sees something they weren't meant to see).
i think that's a little naive. cheating is a highly emotional thing. business relationships are a rational thing.
although some people are mixing both up, most of people i have worked with manage to separate.
one of my moost loyal colleagues is cheating on his wife for years. and yet, he is loyal to the tasks and to the company.
hence, i find your view a little naive and funny and perhaps would label it with some -ism if there was some -ism term for what you think. making conclusions on people based on a thing that is 100% private and not related to the professional life is an -ism.
Cheating perhaps, I can work with people who have had emotional reasons, but as the kid of parents who went through this (when I was an adult), the thing I will never understand is the ability for people to just endlessly lie to themselves and the people they supposedly love. That ability to lie to “trusted” friends and family members potentially for years on end is a huge no for me and I wouldn’t trust anyone who had done that in their personal lives.
Sorry for expressing it this way, but what's naive is thinking your colleague is loyal. It is much simpler to just consider that he hasn't found a situation to screw you and the rest of the team yet, and that when such a situation happens, there's a chance he will act accordingly.
To me he has simply been unmasked as someone who is doing whatever he is currently incentivized to do, rather than someone who respects agreements. When you respect agreements it means you stick to it even when the situation changes to make it less favorable. When people do this it makes a lot of things much easier, since agreements can be relied on.
If you've ever been screwed over in business, you'll find your partners go to all sorts of lengths to pretend they were within their legal rights, which are conveniently just next to their moral obligations.
What is even more naive is thinking there are no other colleagues "that they haven't found a situation to screw you and the rest of the team yet, and that when such a situation happens, there's a chance they will act accordingly".
Just because you do not know whether someone cheated on their spouse does not mean they did or didn't or would or wouldn't. It means you don't know.
And just because someone did or was willing to do something in one context does not mean they would do so in another different context, but they would probably do so in a similar context.
For an employee or contractor in a limited role, sure, whatever.
For a partner, business is rational until it's not. If things start to go wrong. If lots of money is on the line and the contract is not iron clad.
I've seen enough times in my life that people who justify shady actions with excuses in one area of life will do the same in another, when the stakes are high.
As long as it filters false positives fine, false negatives are casualties.
We all have some filters in similar ways. I wouldn't want to work with a guy that shows violence to their family. I just don't want it. Simple as that.
Sure it's a filter, but I think the point is that the sensitivity / specificity of said filter might be below 50% for all you know. I doubt anyone in this thread has performed thorough analysis to try to determine either of those numbers.
Everyone is able to fall in love with someone else if put into a certain position with the right attributes. That's how the world works and is in many cases not the end of the world.
Setting someone up in a business deal is much worse.
So these 2 things are completely different and not the same.
It's one thing to be upfront. "I love someone new, let's divorce / some other arrangement." There will be hurt feelings but that's life. The honesty will help everyone in the long run.
It's entirely another thing to sneak around - to do something you promised not to do, but in secret, so you don't get caught.
It is my observation and experience that the kind of person who breaks trust in secret is not someone I want to rely on in other parts of life.
Unlike the other replies, I believe that people actually can control their emotions -- especially if they are expert meditators.
That said, I usually don't date expert meditators, so wouldn't expect my partner to have a perfect control over their emotions. But I would expect them to have sufficient control over their actions. So that is where I draw the line.
Most people don't fall in love with people that they have set normal friendship boundaries with. Intimacy isn't just a physical thing. You do, in fact, have some degree of control over your emotions.
I've never heard of "cheated at the emotional level". I don't understand how this could be a thing, you don't control your emotions. You are however somewhat free to act on them or not.
It as a "thing" for those that have an unhealthy attachment style. Those in such situations will tend to be controlling and suspicious of every minor thing in order to fend of the possibility someone else "infiltrating" the relationship. Is is the typical scenario where one partner tries to isolate the other from their social circles.
Depending on the culture, the fear is that such "emotional cheating" will either eventually lead to "physical cheating" or even worse (probably feared more by men), lead to a dissolution of the relationship (without necessarily involving cheating) (probably feared more by women).
Any kind of interaction of one partner with an outside party can become suspect of containing emotional content, which the other partner believes they are entitled to. In graver cases it may even imply a diversion of resources (time, mind space, wealth, etc.) towards the third party that the partner believes is entitled to.
If homosexuality and bisexuality wasn't an even bigger taboo, all relationships and interactions would have the potential for "cheating emotionally".
That is a complete red-pillesque reductive explanation that I'd expect to hear out of a MGTOW style community.
Intimacy happens at more than just the physical level, and most people reserve some types of intimacy (physical or emotional) for their significant other. When you cross the boundary of intimacy you normally set for people other than your significant other with someone else, that can easily be interpreted as disingenuous or betraying to your SO.
> That is a complete red-pillesque reductive explanation that I'd expect to hear out of a MGTOW style community
Precisely, I didn't mean for that comment to sound like an endorsement. Maybe I should have used a "/s" but it's not actually sarcasm, it was just meant to illustrate what some people believe. My bad. From the little I have seen, MGTOW fall into the trap of believing possessiveness is only applicable to women, along with other stereotyping misogynistic beliefs.
In case I actually gendered the explanation, I did not mean to. Either partner can be possessive. I do not know whether there are studies on which direction it happens more often.
> Intimacy happens at more than just physical the physical, and most people reserve some types of intimacy (physical or emotional) for their significant other. When you cross the boundary of intimacy you normally set for people other than your significant other with someone else, that can easily be interpreted as disingenuous or betraying to your SO.
The point is that each partners boundary is a personal thing, it may be agreed upon in a couple if it was discussed in advance and it can be shifted afterwards. And if it is discussed, it may be set in the same place for both partners or not. But by default, if it is not discussed, it is likely to be different. And people are likely to judge others assuming that everyone's boundary is in the same place.
The boundary can be set anywhere but it is important for each partner to know the other partners boundary and decide whether it is something they can live with or not, in which case it is better to find someone who is a better fit, otherwise the result will be resentment, betrayal and conflict.
> When you cross the boundary of intimacy you normally set for people other than your significant other with someone else, that can easily be interpreted as disingenuous or betraying to your SO.
So for example, going on dates with someone else than your SO? I can see how that would be betraying/cheating in a way, though I'm not sure if "emotional cheating" is a good way to express it.
Yes, that's a great example. I'm not sure if the term emotional cheating is the correct one but that's how I've heard examples like that one described before.
> that the kind of person who breaks trust in secret
Who has never lied or "broken trust in secret" in their lives? You'd hold someone forever accountable for making a horrible mistake that had nothing to do with you?
"horrible mistake"? This isn't an "oops I forgot to pick up milk on the way home from work" or "oops I got in a bar fight and had to spend the night in jail"
I can understand it if someone ends up in a relationship that has no life in it anymore, but they are loyal to the children. Still, that still raises questions about trustworthiness.
There is not only loyalty in that situation. There is also lying to your partner and the children, and the example and values that you give to your children.
Apparently the children are important to you, otherwise you would be gone from a bad relationship. It involves lying to people that are important to you, which does not speak well for trustworthiness. I can imagine the children are more important than someone outside the family, so at least I need to set some expectations right. That doesn't mean trust is a black and white thing.
well the alternative to lying would be that both partners know they can't stand each other but are remaining together for the sake of the children, I figure once you are at that point of remaining together for the sake of the children and nothing else probably both parties know the score.
What if your (ex) partner takes the children away with them? You can't be sure that they also consider staying together for the children to be the best course of action.
The condition of staying in good relations with your wife where she does not take the children and blast off is not having a romantic life on the side.
You understand this condition but try to get around it by lying. Not because it is unfair or impossible. Just because you want to have good things without paying for them.
So in your opinion, the punishment for having an affair should be to have one's children taken away from you? Or at least, you think it is an appropriate punishment. I don't think everybody would agree.
There are a lot of ways to breach a "contract" that is marriage, including a voluntary termination. However, being unfaithful is a good way to ruin your marriage, so if it means things to you please don't cheat your wife, unless explicitly being on different terms (and even then...).
This one is totally reasonable. It does not grant you any protection for the other cases, though.
You were right to hide behind a throwaway account. It's honestly quite easy to construct scenarios where cheating is entirely rational. But even the mere idea of such things make people revel with disgust. I don't expect to change anyone's point of view, but I will provide a very simple example to at least frame the mindset of a potential cheater:
"You are happily married to your partner but after a few years your sexual relationship has ceased to exist. What used to be causal, recurring sex has now become something of a burden. One partner constantly initiates, but the other is disinterested or even disgusted. This goes on for years. You discuss therapy, but your partner won't hear of it. Your marriage is entirely functional and even productive otherwise. You think about divorce. But you've really put in a lot in this house. You still love your partner, but they've changed. You have kids and responsibilities and a life together, and yet an emotional and biological part of you is ground down to a fucking pulp. It's very easy to just say "Divorce!" and clean your hands of the whole affair. But you're not stupid. You know your life could be ruined. Everything you've built can be taken away. The trust and relationships you've built could be destroyed. Your partner is almost an intimate part of your life, and ripping them out is like ripping your own heart out. You're not strong enough to do it. It's cowardly. But you're not perfect, and neither is your partner for putting you in this spot anyway.
So what do you do? You risk it all, because you can't figure out any better. You're putting it all on the line for one little pity fuck that you don't even enjoy, that fills you with regret. You are ashamed of yourself. But deep down you still know that no matter how much love and affection and stability exists in your world, you cannot abandon that single, little fraction of your primate brain that just wants to fuck. You can lie and you can pretend all you want. Make whatever concessions exist in this world for the greater good and the happiness of all mankind and all that fuzzy stuff. And yet, at the end of it all, there's still just you. Alone."
I can easily come up with a dozen scenarios. Relationships change. Power dynamics change. The role of sex in a relationship changes. People change. Sometimes it's not even about the sex, but the possibility of sex and the projection of one's own self worth and affirmation of their attractiveness and self-esteem as they battle life's hurdles.
It's so easy to assume a puerile black and white opinion on the internet. The morally and ethically -Right.Thing.To.Do- stares at you proudly with their throbbing member. But people are not that simple, it's just not that easy.
I don't know if you read TFA. HN etiquette says that I shouldn't question it. Assuming you have, then please be the person who actually writes a book. I think you have a lot more understanding of the abrasive wear of normal human relationships than most. And you can put words together.
I also want to thank you for your comment that took a binary outlook on the world and introduced some small nuance.
[only the wrong sort of people don't like nuance. Burn them all I say! /s]
I spent quite a bit of time exploring this topic some years back and have engaged with all of the nuances you have elaborated. However I still think you can reduce this part about the 'little primate brain that just wants to fuck' to a moral decision where the cheater is simply willing to put their own needs over those of everyone around them. The fact remains that maaany people _can_ ignore this part of their brain and after all the books and articles, I still feel they those who can't are just wimps when it comes down to it.
We have words for people who are not willing to sustain pain for a greater good and we have words for those who can.
Alain de Botton's book was the worst. It attempted to glorify it as being some necessary/indirectly selfless act done for the preservation of a marriage. Deluded
Your example showcases a relationship that is perfect in all aspects other than sexual. Many relationships are not that. In many relationships emotions may go sour, trust may fade, etc. before sex becomes dysfunctional (think about the existence of makeup sex), all while both partners choose to remain in the relationship for entirely rational reasons. And as time passes, making the choice of divorce becomes harder and harder. But indeed, the topic of is so very nuanced even in cases like the example. From an outside viewpoint, there theoretically might be better alternatives but people are complicated.
A divorce, at least in the short term, is a lose-lose proposition, except:
- cases where either one is in a life threatening situation (most usually women due to domestic violence - a death-lose situation)
- cases where the law allows one to have net gains at the expense of the other and do so repeatedly (in this case marriage and divorce become a wealth transfer strategy - a win-lose situation)
In the above example, theoretically, transitioning to an open relationship would be a better alternative, allowing both partners to compartmentalize the dysfunctional parts of the relationship. But this solution is not always plausible. Proposing such a solution is not plausible in many cases. Even pondering such a solution may not be plausible in many situations. Because, in many cases, simply having it known, that such an idea was given though, is enough to unravel relationships. See all the comments that vilify "emotional cheating".
How do you feel about immigrants? All nations indoctrinate their citizens for decades: you must be loyal, patriotic, etc. Yet we see immigrants. At what point is it ok to do business with an immigrant? After they get their citizenship (2 decades)?
What about American citizens with dual citizenship? Is it ok to do business with them?
People who start their job search before quitting their current job? Should they be considered at all for employment.
People who convert from their religion at birth? Can they be trusted?
Is it ok to be unfaithful before marriage (dating/cohabiting), before you met the person you are supposed to be with the rest of your life? Is it ok to be unfaithful after marriage has ended (dating/marriage)?
Immigrants: you don't get to choose where you're born. Dual citizenship seems similar. I see no particular reason to consider "allegiance to the government" as a matter of trustworthiness, barring actual treason.
Job search: this is a real topic of debate in the business world already, but seems pretty commonly accepted due to the deteriorating nature of employer-employee relationships.
Religious conversions: the "you don't get to choose birth religion" argument from above combined with the inherently illogical nature of religion makes this one nearly impossible to judge on.
Unfaithful before marriage: seems pretty easy to toss this into the same category as "unfaithful during marriage".
Not trying to be flippant, but I genuinely do see basically all of the cases you listed as strictly less serious than being unfaithful during a committed relationship.
A relationship or marriage is something personally that you decide to commit to. You are making a promise to them, a commitment to that person, on the very deepest level.
You are implying that the national indoctrination is the same, but it's obviously not. Lots of people have to listen to that indoctrination but doesn't agree with it. Loyalty cannot be broken when it was not given in the first place.
> All nations indoctrinate their citizens for decades
What has this got to do with anything? Being told by your country you should feel a certain way is a one-sided arrangement. It's totally unrelated to voluntarily deciding to make a promise to someone, and arranging for all your friends and relatives (and god, if that makes sense to you) to be present while you make that promise.
If you have much to do with family court you'd fully understand why suicide is a way out for men treated like sources of money with little other value.
It would be quite educational for all men to attend family court as an observer prior to marriage. They might reconsider marriage as an institution altogether. Society itself might have to realise how badly things are set up.
Maybe not. Everything's fine. Enjoy your special day. It'll be great.
And yet if you bring up any of this, how men are financially/emotionally/psychologically raped in family courts, you're instantly labeled an MRA and the issue is dismissed entirely.
And people still have the nerve to shout hollow shit like "smash the patriarchy". Society can be quite sickening
I remember one story from a lawyer I dated. The woman accused her ex-husband of abuse. Recently divorced and with eyes on custody of the children, so there was a high likelihood of the accusation being false. This isn't just my opinion either, this is what the court's appointed criminal psychologists say based on their experience.
The man was arrested, removed from his home based on the word of his ex-wife. After some lengthy court proceedings, he was released pending further trial on the condition he not approach her in the meantime.
He tried to go home but she was still there. He couldn't go in because of the court order. His home, and he can't go inside without being arrested. She had absolutely no rights to the house since it had been purchased prior to marriage. Despite this, his lawyers tried to negotiate with the woman, to no avail. She simply refused to leave. Apparently there was no way to evict her either.
At some point the situation must have pissed off the lawyers because they got sick of negotiating and started straight up maneuvering. They waited until she left his residence, moved him back inside and changed the locks. When she tried to come back, she couldn't.
Wish I knew what happened after that. All I was told was that her life became a lot harder afterwards.
>If you have much to do with family court you'd fully understand why suicide is a way out for men treated like sources of money with little other value.
That depends on the country. But if I'd live in US I wouldn't marry without a prenuptial agreement.
In plenty of places, you don't even want to live with someone too long without a pre-nuptial agreement and even then the law can cancel those agreements.
You can also take preventive measures, establish an offshore company and move all your assets on that. Move money in off-shore accounts. If you have nothing under your name, nothing can be taken from you.
...but I only met her last night for a beer and dinner, you mean I have to set up an international group of companies to protect my stereo, fancy dining table and car? Yes, son. Otherwise you'll lose everything. Here's a list of firms that can help...
What a world we live in. I doubt nothing you wrote but the steps that lead to your understanding seem as difficult as my own. Society is truly a mess.
Fortunately the IRS is not involved in judgements from non-tax courts.
The IRS does not care about what structure you use, they only care about compliance. It is very useful to reframe your understanding of the IRS. They are not really adversaries, they will even help you set up this stuff even though they are aware it undermines their own name of revenue. Remember, its only Congress that cares and even then they are pretending. The perception of the IRS comes from most people's interaction with the IRS: retroactive enforcement of a penalty at the least convenient time. Leading cash-poor people to want to hide from the IRS, leading to greater vulnerability.
By reporting taxes to the IRS or filing reports to the Treasury (their parent agency), yes, it may seem counterintuitive that you are associating yourself with additional properties to the literal government. But that doesn't inherently create consequences to other branches of the government, judges, or private creditors, it also doesn't mean they those other parties get to know about it.
Finally, one last thing to remember, obfuscating the existence or movement of money is not illegal. Its another reason why the IRS doesn't care about anyone's convoluted structure of companies and trusts around the world, because they are not illegal and neither are most transactions between them. A money laundering charge, for example, requires an illicit origin of funds. So it can only be a tacked on charge after the government has discovered the origin and the origin was illicit. As such, using your own legally earned money post-tax money and sheltering it in a convoluted way garners no issue from the IRS. And if it earns a little bit, you can still report and pay taxes on it. Also, the new thing in this century is that you also don't need a bank account to hold liquid assets under these organization's names, therefore nuking the Treasury/FinCEN report of foreign bank accounts when that was part of the strategy.
This, and nothing prevents an ex-spouse to "challenge" the prenup. If you are the wealthier one, you will have to pay for your ex attorney's fees on top of yours.
Lawyers on both sides will play this game, filing motion and racking up your bills until the wealthier spouse (usually the men is completely dried up).
For Dr. Dre who is a billionaire it is a painful lesson. For most of the average middle class men, you will end up broke sleeping in your car.
Bitter women can use this "scorched earth technique" as a revenge because they know that at the end of the battle, once all the family's assets have been spent on lawyers, the wife will still get spouse and child support as a safety net.
It also only applies to assets you held before not including appreciation. So if you were bold enough to hold crypto from 2012, got married in 2015, and got divorced this year… bye bye all your money.
Yes thats true. Also if you live alone and slip in shower there might be no one to notice and help you etc. There is no easy answers with anything to do with sociology.
> Men in marriage live longer and healthier lives on average to men in long-term relationships and to single men.
What a blanket statement. Does that apply to every married man, without fail? What about women? Do married women live longer and healthier lives too? If so, why do they file for divorce?
> “There’s a veneer of safety now. But the way a multinational views safety off West Africa is different from the way it views safety in the North Sea. You see pictures of guys welding with cling film wrapped around their eyes. If someone gets injured out there, it won’t make the news, it won’t affect share prices. Or is that too cynical?”
Decline of marriage, high divorce rate, increasing single parent rate, inflation/wage stagnation, young men increasingly 'opting out' and sexless, doesn't sound good for the future. The relationship market in the West seems horribly broken, not good at all if you want a thriving happy society.
> not good at all if you want a thriving happy society
You might be interested to read the report commissioned by Congress in 1970 from the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, chaired by John D. Rockefeller Ⅲ: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED050960.pdf#page=10
Unless a declining population is good for future prosperity.
If you force a continuation of replacement rate births or even growth, but most of those humans are economically worthless, you'll drag down your whole society.
I'm not talking solely about births (didn't even mention the birth rate), I'm saying for mental health/general thriving of society too.
Kids raised in married 2 parent households are less likely to end up homeless, achieve better academically and earn more, have less depression/suicide rates etc. Literally every outcome is better for stable 2 parent homes. The decline of the 2 parent nuclear family means more kids will suffer.
I don't really understand why it has to be either or. You can have your population decline if you want, but why does that have to mean single parent homes?
Can't you raise your 1 or 2 kids in the context of marriage to give them a higher chance of a better outcome, and still have your population decline?
Such statistics are misleading and it's a pet peeve when they are pulled out in discussions. You can't predict a child's outcome so simply. Both Obama and Clinton were raised by single parents. Such statistics are only on average. Yet so many conservatives use these kinds of statistics to shame and guilt single parents, and try to justify policies of discrimination against non traditional family structures.
That’s an unnecessarily dark idea. There’s no requirement that widespread unhappiness is the driving force behind preventing overpopulation. Also the purpose of a human life is not economic output.
Not to mention men get no benefit out of marriage anymore. I mean there was some book I remember reading on reddit from the 1920s or 40s where women were not supposed to reject their husbands advances. Now you could be tried for sexual assault as a couple ffs. On top of this, divorce universally screws over men.
When you create incentive programs such as divorce, a population doesnt take long to adapt to the institutions horror stories. No marriage means no alimony on breakup. Also no marriage means women wont be as likely to leave if they do not work because of it especially if they have a small support network.
Women have also become more independent. Much like Japan, many western women dont wanna be baby makers. The government kinda forgot though that...well...its kinda important for society. Single mothers increasing helps nobody and dudes are less likely to pay child support when not from marriage.
Overall its been a massive cultural change that will affect future generations significantly. How do you get people to care for a future they arent allowed to create? If anything, apathy to the future generations has been growing since many people dont have children to care for.
> Not to mention men get no benefit out of marriage anymore. I mean there was some book I remember reading on reddit from the 1920s or 40s where women were not supposed to reject their husbands advances. Now you could be tried for sexual assault as a couple ffs. On top of this, divorce universally screws over men.
God this is creepy. If someone doesn't want to have sex with you, and you force them to, that's rape.
Relationship market seems like it's the best it's ever been, from a standpoint of equality, that is.
COVID unfortunately brought domestic violence rates up, but I wouldn't lump that in with the generality of "relationship market", it's a more serious & specific issue.
edit: Ahh, by the time I finish posting you've come and brought up the "nuclear family"
Hard to imagine anything good will come from a discussion hinging on that.
Anecdata: the males I've personally seem "opting out" have major personal issues and are honestly dangerous to any potential partners, mentally and physically. I don't feel much for them except for wishing the U.S. had better and more affordable healthcare so they could get some mental healthcare. But once again - anecdata - these also aren't the types to seek mental healthcare. Oh well.
> Ahh, by the time I finish posting you've come and brought up the "nuclear family"
> Hard to imagine anything good will come from a discussion hinging on that.
Genuine question, why does it sound like you find me advocating for a 2 parent household almost offensive? Is it because you don't believe any of the data about kids raised in 2 parent households is valid? From my perspective, I genuinely don't understand your reaction here at all because I thought this was a generally accepted fact in psychology/sociology.
I'm just asking out of curiosity for your perspective, I promise I'm not baiting you into a debate :)
I've made zero reference or statement to "2 parent household"
Only the term nuclear family.
In any case, "nuclear family" dates to around one century at most, in essentially a singular country.
I'd much rather look to the notion of "it takes a village" and extended family concepts that have existed for millennia and overwhelmingly brought us to where we are now.
Fair enough, thanks for expanding and that makes sense. I agree ideally we would have more people beyond just the 2 parents around to lean on to help raise kids. Preferably the 2 parents (where possible, not advocating you stick with an abusive partner) plus extended family nearby at the very least. I like the multigenerational lifestyle too.
> Relationship market seems like it's the best it's ever been, from a standpoint of equality, that is.
What makes you say this? Last I heard the trend of it getting harder and harder for men has been continuing. When one side has to go crazy going to the gym and making themselves interesting and whatever to stand out while the other side just has to put one blurry picture with no text on any dating site to get inundated with suitors, how can you call that equal?
I think the primary issue with the hetero 'relationship market' these days, is that it's not really a 'relationship' market if you mean stable relationships. People aren't really looking for stable long term relationships as much. Women are much more open to the idea of having a baby outside of marriage and also intentionally being a single mother than they were in the past.
Because women don't really have to settle for 1 man anymore (less stigma nowadays about being single into your 30s/single mother), it becomes more of a hookup market, and naturally women will always have more leverage when it comes to the hookup market due to men's natural higher levels of horniness/willingness to hookup with a wider variety of women than vice versa. If it was a relationship market where everyone has to eventually choose 1 person to settle with like in the past, women wouldn't have as much leverage. You can only have things like '80/20' rule if the market isn't about monogamy (it's not actually 80/20 in reality, but the general dynamic of a minority of men having most of the success with women). Everyone would end up with the same level of success, because everyone would end up with 1 partner if the market was about monogamous stable long term relationships.
My guess would be that online dating is extremely biased in favor of women because men tend to over-value looks while women tend to value things that are harder to communicate at a glance. Which would be why men generally feel ignored and women generally feel like they have tons of really shitty options.
I don't understand the nature of your argument other than it sounds like you may have some deep seated insecurities or shortcomings, true or imaginary.
If you'd really like to talk about "what's been heard" though, the last I heard the trend was going in the opposite direction of not wanting men who go crazy to the gym, because they tend to be egoistical narcissists.
Note: I go crazy to the gym, but solely because I have a rare connective tissue disorder and my body would otherwise fall apart. Well, it still does - just slightly less with the gym religion.
Double note: I can anecdotally attest to a decent amount of fellow male gym patrons being egoistical narcissists. I have also met a fair amount of females who fit the same description though. But, also plenty of people who just want to stay fit for various normal reasons.
HN being tech oriented, thus male commenters tend to live in gender skewed cities. Bay Area, Seattle, etc for the 25-45 age range. Where yes some men might have harder time.
But really there are approximately same amount of men to women in the dating/family making age group.
Being normal, mildly interesting, and not a slob is all most men will have to do to find women to date.
The reason a some men don't get dates on dating apps, is they send the dumbest of messages. Putting out zero effort and expecting something is rarely going to yield results.
It might just be an artefact of dating sites/apps, but I think that GP takes that into account with the supposition (I don't know if it is/can be shown with hard data) that women on such sites don't even have to be particularly normal, or mildly interesting.
It's also a bit of a catch-22. Say you want to become 'mildly interesting' (for the purposes of dating). So you quit video games after work, and you join some club activities. The activities don't really interest you, but at least you're "working on yourself" to become more interesting. You burn out because it's hard to magically find interest in something you just don't care for.
Personally, I don't mind guys whose interests are gaming or some generally solitary (generally male) activity like programming. But I don't think that's the case for the majority of women, though.
Say a guy gets fed up with dating apps/sites. "Get out there!" and "Just be yourself!" people will tell him. Again, he joins activities that have a fairer balance of men and women to the activities he's usually interested in (video game events, chess clubs, hackathons). Think yoga classes, fiction book clubs, gym activity groups.
Again, he has to force himself to enjoy the activity, and simultaneously never let it slip that actually he's there to improve his chances of finding a date (nor can he risk hitting on anyone, lest word gets out).
For what it's worth, I have several male friends who custom-tailor polite messages for each person they're interested in, mentioning what they read in the bio field, and never get responses.
> Putting out zero effort and expecting something is rarely going to yield results.
The comment you are replying to says that men have to put in a lot more effort than women, and you reply with a strawman about men not putting in any effort. Nice.
> Anecdata: the males I've personally seem "opting out" have major personal issues and are honestly dangerous to any potential partners, mentally and physically.
Doesn't matter, if too many males opt out females would either have to be alone or compete for the remaining males. Competition would certainly result in changes in male behaviour (because they won't be competing for a mate).
This is a vicious cycle which would result in more males having "major personal issues".
>if too many males opt out females would either have to be alone or compete for the remaining males.
I don't know what's shaped your worldview, but this really isn't how things work, at all.
>This is a vicious cycle which would result in more males having "major personal issues".
Oh well. With the current trajectory of tech, we'll soon be able to identify these types from whatever tech they use and send out a robo-taxi to take them to their government mandated treatment facility :P
I've been thinking that workforce gender equality would happen faster if men had a predictable choice of being subsidized in heterosexual relationships.
I think an even distribution of people would choose that.
Seems a lot of energy is spent on not considering how the funnels are different for men and women, and how that factors into dilution of the workforce pipeline by gender initially and over time. My thoughts are that this is a greater factor in everything about this topic. Like, a lot of understanding about the work place structure could be made by noticing that many men don't really want to be there while many women are there out of pride in lieu of other choices. (Many =/= most. Likely an even distribution of all populations experiencing the same thing, except the choice of subsidy.)
I’ve seen couples support each other taking turns going to school, but there was the expectation of becoming a dual income couple and even then they were together as economic equals beforehand
I can think of one or two couples where the woman was a high level executive with a broke artist waiting for their big break. I would actually dare extrapolate that to an extreme where highly economically unequals get together.
But I want to see something more mundane. Like a single earning woman is a UPS driver keeping a man that is so enamored with her ability to provide. Because I’ve seen that with the gender roles reversed, and that attractive woman could have been a live in partner with anyone. This would not be predictable for men in heterosexual relationships right now.
This. All the "progress" of the past 100 years has come through exploitative labor, fossil fuel, plastics, reckless mining, massive farming (incl. meat)
a tiny extent, through technology, but that too via undercompensated labor of scientists
I support that sentiment. I don’t think anyone truly chooses to do these bad jobs. Perhaps they apply a fake veneer of choice, manliness, romanticism. But ultimately I can only conclude that people do it for lack of a better option.
Many of the (mostly men) people who do this work do so because it’s part of their identity and culture. I would recommend more conversations with folks who do the hard labor.that’s why coal miners vote in ways that don’t make sense!
The problem is not the job itself. Many people are fulfilled by working hard dangerous jobs. The problem is the compensation and status.
