<p>I’m rooting for you TrueLove. It is refreshing to see such optimism!</p>
<p>Pea, I agree with the importance of making your “own” self happy. That is a very wise statment. I am just saying that if two people focus on a healthy way to encourage happiness in the other, this is true sacrificial love. For instance, if my spouse hates something, I would step in and do it with them or surprise them. Again, our family practices this. Indeed, my parents do have issues. And many of them are shared when we have family discussions. But, others are just for them to hash out. Yes, they get thoroughly frustrated, but never to the point of invoking fear in us children or to their spouse. They work it through and we give them the space!</p>
<p>Thanks Pea!</p>
<p>Crazy, I am with you! Those parents that stay miserable are really hurting themselves and their kids. They need to root out their selfish behavior, maybe by getting some personal coaching/counseling.</p>
<p>I will say, and I can’t believe I didn’t think about this, but even when you’ve got what looks like a stable life marriage can still go sour. My parents were married for 15 years before they divorced. My dads had basically the same job for most of that time, we lived in the same house, etc. I’ve never been quite sure why they divorced, but I do know that things between them were not as good as they were when I was much younger.</p>
<p>That’s the one thing that scares me about marriage. The fact that you really cannot predict the future. I like to say that I can make myself be “Mr. Right” as TrueLove said and that I can adapt to change, but you never know… hence why I’m a fan of prenuptial agreements. But then there’s a problem with those: it might make your potential spouse not want to marry you because he/she will think you don’t have enough faith in the marriage.</p>
<p>Complex stuff, really. If it wasn’t for the fact that I would like to have kids one day, I wouldn’t mind never marrying.</p>
<p>(In reply to an earlier comment) Actually, one of my teachers in high school mentioned that couples who move in together before marriage end up not working out, statistically. He was one of the most intelligent teachers I’ve ever had, so I’ll take his word :p. But of course there are exceptions I’m sure…</p>
<p>I know myself…one of my biggest needs is security (type 6 if you’ve ever taken the enneagram). I’d have to be in a committed relationship for me to get any enjoyment out of it; loyalty is a huge value among others. That’s the don Quixote part of me. This is especially essential because I’m set on a potentially stressfull career path…I really don’t need the extra anxiety. I love caring about people and making 'em smile with silly crap and all that :). That’s what energizes and motivates me to do what I do. Sounds corny but IDC :). If it’s “romantic attention” it makes me happier to direct that at one person than to spread myself thin with many people… </p>
<p>Reading some of the posts here makes me a little sad… sounds as though a few would be willing to just throw away a built-up relationship for something stupid…again, the don Quixote part of me speaks. :s </p>
<p>I definitely wouldn’t expect a perfect relationship, marriage or otherwise, but I’d expect to do the best I could to make it work. My own parents have a not so great relationship…they probably should’ve gotten a divorce years ago. I almost hate going home during breaks because of it…thank god for friends lol. But I have a good idea of how it deteriorated and I intend to learn from their mistakes.</p>
<p>Love is to care more about someone else than you care about yourself. That is all.</p>
<p>I must say, I am really enjoying what people are saying here. Very insightful. Thanks. This is beyond entertainment, this is just plain real life honest analysis. Sweet.</p>
<p>Yeah, my point was that if there’s real love (as opposed to romance) then it definitely won’t “run dry after two years” like someone said earlier. It might get a little less passionate, but real love is being able to transcend that.</p>
<p>man i don’t want to grow up!!!</p>
<p>^Would you happen to be a Toys R’Us kid, by chance?</p>
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<p>What does run dry after a few years is the effortless romance that most people think is real love. That’s just psychological fact; after a few years of thinking that your partner is just totally awesome, your hormones shift and the feeling just isn’t there. If you aren’t both making an active effort to love each other, you are going to fall out of love.</p>
<p>^^^Or Peter Pan?</p>
<p>Look at all of us, brainwashed by the Disney Princess movies they inflicted on us at age 6…the perfect woman isn’t wearing a purple bra swimming around in the ocean somewhere, ready for you to turn her tail into legs so you can bang her 
(or is she?)</p>
<p>Everyone dreams of a perfect marriage, but the divorce rate is nearly 50% and I think for our generation it will simply get bigger. 
Then again, earlier generations would just suck it up and deal if they fell out of love with their partner, because divorce wasn’t socially acceptable. People would look down on the woman, especially.</p>
<p>I’ve read Christians have the highest divorce rates, and i’m guessing it’s partly because many of them marry just to finally get laid, and then they’re like, crap, my partner isn’t so good in the sack because neither of us have any practice.</p>
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<p>Whoa, there. That’s a pretty big generalization. I have a lot of Christian friends who are waiting for sex until marriage, and their reasons go way beyond their desire to obey the rules. Staying a virgin for that long is incredibly difficult, and honestly, I think people who choose that path solely for the sake of following some church law don’t have much chance of making it. Putting on a purity ring doesn’t make you any less of a sexual being than anyone else. But for my friends, it’s much more than that. They consider it an integral part of their faith, and they would never throw something like that away “just to finally get laid.”</p>
<p>I definitely agree that there’s no such thing as the perfect marriage or the perfect relationship because people are imperfect, though I don’t think that makes the decision to accept a challenge like marriage any less noble or worthwhile. The current tween generation is going to have unrealistic expectations for relationships too someday–only they’ll have Edward and Bella, not Disney, to thank for that…:)</p>
<p>For a second I was thinking this guy’s heretical theology of marriage was a joke…</p>
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<p>My parents both came from not-so-great home lives, especially my mother who was conceived out of wedlock and whose parents were divorced when she was like 10. For them, knowing what it’s like to grow up in a broken family was a bug part of the motivator to do things differently. Which is part of the reason they’re still together after 21 years. I’m kind of hoping that with such high divorce rates these days, more people will come to similar conclusions and learn from the mistakes of their parents.</p>
<p>@mflevity - Oh no, don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to put down Christian values or anything and I understand most people who only believe in marital sex don’t get married just to have sex. But it is true that evangelical christians have higher divorce rates in this country, and I think this could be a possible explanation for it. For example, one poster on this thread has repeatedly commented he only believes in marital sex and wants to get married young, before the “itch” becomes too much to bear.
I hope so too, but our generation is used to instant gratification :/</p>
<p>Adult males generally aren’t ready to make a long-term commitment in their young 20s. At least not today. There are so many uncertainties at that age and there’s so much else to conquer to put your working life on a sound footing.</p>
<p>I also didn’t see any discussion here on considerations of new, extended family. When you marry someone, you also marry into their family which may or may not be attractive once you take a closer look.</p>
<p>Personally, I would want to marry around my late 20’s or very early 30’s due to several reasons:</p>
<ol>
<li>I will have around $120k in debt after college so I want to start paying some of my loans. </li>
<li>In my industry, I will be working long hours including holidays and weekends and I want to be a family man so yeah… </li>
<li>I want to make sure that the person I will marry will love me very much and I would for her as well. The thought of having a divorce aches me since it would hurt the kids more that is if I have kids at that time. </li>
<li>More time after graduation allows me to have a stable job with decent pay to support the future family.</li>
</ol>
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<p>The Catholic divorce rate is 0%. :p</p>