https://archive.is/AfaBY

This is actually the problem. Compromise is when two people in an adversarial relationship both try to look out for themselves and inevitably walk away disappointed.

When two people view marriage as a self-giving endeavor, rather than a self-serving one, happiness follows. You're happy to give and happy to be loved in return.

The trouble is for so many people, a mutually self-giving relationship is unthinkable.

I've been married for 15 years and my wife and I couldn't be more different. I'm an engineer working on my second Masters degree and she has a high school diploma. Our interests differ wildly but we're very happy because we both share a desire to serve and make the other one happy. Me first is the problem.

The main difference is that Elaine lacks self-awareness, so it's easy to just laugh and not feel bad for her.

There's no need to write a bad review of marriage if it clearly wasn't made for people like you in the first place.

(I do want to stress that Agnes Callard is a good, perceptive thinker on many other topics, even if this piece IMO really misses the point)

Imagine if a president swore "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Or that I will become a tyrannical dictator. Either way. Hard to tell at this point."

If you feed your ego ahead of your soul, you won't know what you really want/need, and if you don't know what you want/need, how is anyone else supposed to satisfy you in any sustainable fashion?

The good news is that relationships can help you develop as a person. You should be growing together and on your own. If you care for someone and feel you're failing them in some way, it should drive you towards self-examination, which should spur new perspectives and development.

I would guess that you and your wife are less driven by ego than most. You probably don't reach a place where you're self-giving without at least corraling your ego. You may be at a point where you take it as a given.

To be clear, everything in your post is good. I just think it's Step 2, rather than Step 1.

Heck in many contexts soul is just a synonym for an ineffable immaterial thing that makes things better (e.g. the soul of a song).

So how can you feed your own soul? How do you know the nature of your soul?

With that definition I feel like a lot of the soul talk makes sense. Like here you 'feed' your soul the information, experiences, and media you seek out, and that influences the 'nature of your soul' by creating the environment it reacts to.

For example, now you've exposed yourself to the idea of a mutually self-giving relationship, and if you keep trying to figure out more about what that means, then your thoughts and choices can start falling in line with that concept.

In common use 'ego' tends to mean someone with selfish or slightly narcissistic personality trait, though, right?

"Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things." — Phillipians 4:8

Freud intended the term "ego" to refer to conscious awareness, basically. Jung used it to mean the focal point of conscious awareness - he treated awareness as being a lot more "smeary" than Freud did.

Western Buddhists use the term to refer to attachment - to the body, emotions, feelings, and the sense of selfhood. I think the closest term might be "atman" - the selfhood that is derived from Vishnu in hindu thinking (I really don't know). Atman sounds like "atmen" - german for breathing. I assume they have the same root. Anyway, the Buddhist notion is a notion of something of which they deny the existence - the term "anatman" refers to the fundamental Buddhist notion that there is no enduring self (or "soul").

I was raised a Christian, and spent a number of decades as a Buddhist; I've never known what the term "soul" was supposed to refer to.

It's about dispelling ignorance about identity. This is easier being a bit dim.

By generalization, there's less need to clarify more coarse concepts.

Whoever I see the word soul, in an argument I can otherwise understand… it works and glosses over a lot of complicated common ground.

But if I don’t know what’s going on, it’s as useful as reading “quod erat demonstrandum” at the end of a proof.

It's not an easy thing to summarize or pin down, and it's kind of different for everyone.

If you both like each other, you'll want to give, and the relationship is probably going to feel mutually fulfilling. If it's not mutual, you won't want to give, even if you force yourself, and you'll resent doing things for them.

Honestly I think all these reframings are a way of avoiding the basic fact that the main source of satisfaction in a relationship is just: how much you're romantically into the other person, and how much they return that. Throw trust in too, since that's sort of separate, but that's the meat and potatoes of the dish. Romance is romance, vast majority of relationship dissatisfaction I see comes from a lack of desire from one person.

But in any case, romance is absolutely the basis of a relationship, otherwise you could marry your best friend. If you don't have it, you're likely to be dissatisfied. Of course it can wane - but that's also why you work to get it back, because if it goes away for good, your relationship is going to suck.

Lots of people never who never really "knew" successful long-term relationships only associate love with those, and that's indeed somewhat immature.

    the absurd situation where you seek divorce because you’re no longer in “love”.

In short, it would be absurd to mix up infatuation with love.

The bigger problem as I've seen over the years with people is that they confuse the two with -other- people. A person married for 5 years becomes infatuated with someone else, which of course means they love them and not their spouse anymore. In their eyes, at least. And the problem with that thinking should be immediately apparent.

It's a complicated subject and I'm not an expert by any means, just sharing my observations.

> [a] situation where you seek divorce because you’re no longer in “love”

is not:

[a] situation where you seek divorce because you’re no longer infatuated

One might well call the second situation absurd too, as, if you knew it was absurd then you shouldn't have wed, but it's still a different absurdity.

My expectation is that it's unlikely in the long-run to fall out of love if both parties still nurture the relationship and invest themselves. But maybe I'm wrong and it happens anyway.

“If you’re a giver, what are you looking for?”

…

“Takers!”

That is, if you’re giving with an expectation of something in return, you’re not looking to give, you’re looking for a transaction. True giving, then, does not carry with it the weight of any expectation or fruit. The joy is in the act of giving itself, the sacrifice, as a candle sacrifices itself to give light.

He elaborated further to say that if one person is giving oriented in a relationship, it would be stable. If both, it would be heaven. To come back to the point of the OP, it’s the focus on “me, me, me” that’s the issue.

Abraham Lincoln said (paraphrase) “there is one way to bring up your children, and that is to walk that way yourself.” I feel in relationships it’s similar. Less sermons, more leading by example without expectations.

1. If kids see the example of a marital power dynamic of taking and giving, it's not that they will necessarily learn to be selfless givers!

2. I like the F Scott Peck definition of love, which is to extend ones self to support the spiritual growth of another. And, often the growth that a taker needs is to learn to be giving. Often, takers take because they view themselves as a victim.

For a giver, it can be really difficult to go outside of one's normal giving mode without being sucked into a mode of anger or resentment.

3."Being married" is not an ultimate value—it can hurt all the people involved. Complicated! Sometimes I feel I could be a much better, more giving person in a healthier relationship because I could be helping many more people. If i take your example of the candle—it may be great to sacrifice yourself to create light, but is it worth the sacrifice if you aren't producing light?

I like it because it puts the ball back in my court and forces me to take responsibility without judging the other.

And what is wrong with that? I help you with your shit and you help me with mine.

It's not at the level of transactional quid pro quos. But at a basic level you can't have one giver and one taker. Eventually that breaks down into resentment.

There is value in being able to ask for what you need and being able to realize when giving is not reciprocated.

In the parent post's quote "If you’re a giver, what are you looking for?" the "If" is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

And all of it is healthy. Being submissive doormat and not having boundaries is not healthy.

Thats why people communicate.

Meyers-briggs, zodiac, learning styles, love languages, etc. are all self-fulfilling prophecies that are sold as empowering but are mostly just traps which limit your potential.

If you start to confuse the map for the territory then yes they can be limiting in some ways, because you no longer see any features that are not included on the map. And the features that have been included seem more prominent.

All we can create as humans are maps for things. Different types of abstractions. And refine them over time as we gain better understanding. But when using these maps it's important to keep in mind that they're just one of many ways of describing the thing you're trying to understand.

Myers-Briggs for me was very enlightening, and started me on a journey of understanding how people can be different (led to greater empathy and awareness on my part). I don't walk around classifying people's MBTI type though.

Zodiac... not so much. That map is a bit old now!

As an example of this with Myers-Briggs: I think your MBTI can be helpful if you think of it as "these are the patterns of behavior I naturally fall into, I should try harder to be aware of and use patterns outside my comfort zone in situations where that might be more productive than my default".

However, 9 times out of 10 when I actually meet someone who brings up their MBTI in conversation, the way they think about it is more like "I'm an INTJ, X just isn't something I do", where X is something they probably should do but are avoiding because their MBTI is giving them a pass (in their mind).

So on balance I feel that "maps" like this do more harm than good, because our human instinct when given such a map is to point to it and say "this bit of territory looks scary so I'm gonna avoid it".

I think you're right that confusing the map for the territory is by far the default. So in that sense I do agree with the downsides that you're bringing attention to. And as always, it's not so much about the tool but how you use it.

If you give a power saw to someone who hasn't used it before and hasn't been remotely trained on how to, then they'll probably end up chopping off a limb. But that's not to say the power saw isn't an incredibly effective tool for achieving a very specific task in the right context.

So I can't agree that these maps do more harm than good. It's not as binary as that in my view.

Even if maps like MBTI are wrong - there is a lot of meta-understanding that can come from just going through the exercise. Most people go through life not really understanding that other people don't see the world exactly the same way as they do. And we judge people on their external actions alone with, most of the time, very little understanding or empathy as to what beliefs, traits and preferences might exist below the surface that drives their behaviour.

The bar is very low even for the best of us in our ability to really understand ourselves and others. So just the process of discovering a map that shows you a different view of the world can be very powerful - even if ultimately the map itself isn't quite right.

Without the use of external maps, we create our own internal maps by default anyway - this is just how the brain works. And those maps can have the exact same effect that you're describing. "I believe that I am X and so this is why I can't do Y". But often those maps aren't created with intention, nor are they based on information that is up-to-date and relevant (eg. our limbic system by default wants to pull our default behaviours/actions back towards surviving tiger attacks and hunting for food - this is out of date information encoded in an out of date map).

I guess another way to put it, is we're always following a map of some sort. Our default maps (our beliefs about ourselves) aren't as a rule known to be the most accurate either!

Does this style of post ever work? You are dismissive of all these things but you lack a single reason/argument. Is there a chain of logic that leads you to this conclusion?

It's a bit fascinating to me. I imagine the purpose of a post is to share ideas, to give people a chance to think more like you and that takes a persuasive argument.

On top of that, however, I specifically compared love languages to other things which people might have already examined critically. Since this is HN, probably the most cogent item from my list is zodiac/horoscope, as techies tend to be fairly dismissive of it already, and therefore might have the realization (after reading my comment): "oh wow, I've been believing in love languages this whole time but been dismissive of zodiac, even though both have the same amount of evidentiary backing (~ 0)". However, I actually think "learning styles" is a better example because it is something a lot of people believe in (something like 90% from the surveys I've seen), even though in reality there is almost zero experimental evidence for them as well, despite many biased attempts to do so. My opinion is that love languages are very similar – people believe strongly that there are certain actions/behaviors that they are most receptive to when it comes to romance, but that fundamentally people just want to be loved in a much more generic way and that if the particular way in which love is expressed matters that much to you, you are probably focused on the wrong thing (missing the forest for the trees).

To really spell out why this is bad, let's look back at learning styles: someone believes in learning styles, which don't exist[1]. Specifically, they believe they are a "visual learner". As soon as this belief forms, it almost instantly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy – they think they are a visual learner, so whenever they are faced with learning something in a non-visual way they don't try as hard, and therefore do not learn the material as well. They are effectively self-sabotaging by having this constrained picture of themselves in their head. There is no reason to believe that people who take love languages seriously will not suffer a similar fate. Imagine someone who thinks of themself as a lover whose primary love language is "physical touch", so when someone demonstrates love in a way that is not touch, they say to themselves (maybe not in an explicitly conscious way): "hmm, this isn't as compelling as it could be because I'm a physical touch lover – I wish my partner demonstrated their love with more touch".

In essence, I feel that all of these things, love languages included, are artificial and mostly arbitrary labels (some more arbitrary than others) which only serve to constrain your breadth of experience and openness to new things, resulting in unfortunate self-fulfilling downsides with no clear upside.

[1] https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/edu-a0037478.pdf

To your point tho we use all the languages, and many other things beyond the languages. I think it’s important to not get too fixated on them. It’s just one piece of the puzzle. There’s many other things required besides speaking someone’s love language, but it helps!

https://www.mic.com/p/do-love-languages-actually-matter-psyc...

“I don’t consider it to be an evidence-based practice, but I do find it to be a very useful tool and use it in all of my work with couples,” says Stefani Goerlich, a Detroit-based psychotherapist.

research conducted in 2017 suggests that the five love languages only work when “both spouses exhibit appropriate self-regulatory behaviors.”

Also, just because something only works within specific parameters (spouses with self-regulating behaviors), doesn't mean it doesn't work. It just isn't a cure-all. It would be like saying antibiotics are BS just because they only work on a subset of bacterial infections.

https://www.jhseonline.com/article/view/788

Another study: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233241159_Speaking_...

That doesn't mean psychology in general is pseudoscience. But it does mean this is a bad study that tells us almost nothing, and if this is representative of the quality of studies on the love languages overall, then we basically have no evidence one way or another about them.

> What evidence do you have that the two studies are bad?

The study indicts itself (i.e. it describes its methods, and the methods are not ones that lead to strong evidence).

The study population is only non-representative if applying it to populations that don't match. For example, this study supports the results for university students 18-22. Again, we come back to the point that just because it only applies for a subset does not make it "BS".

So what's wrong with the other study? Or will it be more of the same generalized claims about poor methods without any specific details from the study being given, nor any supporting facts to back up your determination?

When you sample a non-representative subset, you often get different results from the population at large. For example, you might get a different answer if you ask the Porsche enthusiasts club what the best car is, compared to if you ask random people in the population.

Undergrads are the same way. Asking a group of people, almost half of whom are virgins, questions about romantic relationships . . . well let's just say it might not generalize to the adult population.

This is covered in detail in any intro stats course or textbook. You may also be able to Google something like "unrepresentative subset psychology" to get an explainer. I can't do the issue complete justice in a comment here.

> So what's wrong with the other study?

I'm sorry, I did not sign up for reviewing every study you link me to. I reviewed the one, and explained my perception that it is a good example of the overall quality of the research on this topic. If you want an assessment of the other study, you'll need to look elsewhere.

It sounds a bit like trolling when you call something BS, then the source you give shows evidence that it does work in some populations. Then there are two other supportive studies. Yet you want to give non-sensical and non-applicable examples of asking Porche owners questions.

That's obviously not true. Show me the high quality research studies backing up the idea that a hammer is useful for hammering nails or that a flat-head screwdriver is useful as a improvised chisel. The way to tell if a tool is useful is if you use it and it works for your application.

> Love languages were invented to sell a book in 1992.

Can you clarify? Are you saying that someone first decided they were going to sell a book in 1992, and "invented" love languages to "fill in the blank" in order to do so? Or are you just talking about the normal situation of someone introducing a new idea of theirs (or in this case, schema) in the form of a book?

I get the impression that you're objecting to the concept as not really a thing because it doesn't have a deep history. However, not all real things have names, or always had names.

If your partner doesn't want to touch you, what's the most likely explanation? That they "don't speak your love language", or that they aren't attracted to you?

Ok, and if you are that partner, but you don't want to lose the relationship, what's an easy response? "I don't want to touch you because I don't find you attractive," or "I'm sorry babe, I do love you, but we just don't speak the same love language"?

The whole thing is very Cosmo. It's designed to sell in the same way as Cosmo.

So?

> It's a framework that's designed to sound plausible, like a horoscope. It's not designed to be accurate, it's designed to make you go, "oooooh" and repeat the trademark. "Having relationship issues? Oh, have you heard of the Love Languages®? I read about it the other day..."

That sounds like you think it was constructed in bad faith. Do you have any evidence for that?

A model that's simplified can still have value even if it doesn't perfectly fit every situation.

> If your partner doesn't want to touch you, what's the most likely explanation? That they "don't speak your love language", or that they aren't attracted to you?

I'm only passingly familiar with the love languages thing, but I think it does have a point, and I've experienced some of the differences in relationships that is schematizes. Reducing it to sexual attraction is kinda missing the point.

I do agree with the part about not touching though. It seems like a lot of problems are invented in marriages because people are unwilling or unable to say or even think the ugly truth that they simply don't want to have sex with their partner anymore.

Another example: what if someone feels "loved" when they're bought gifts, but that's because they're materialistic, a gold digger? Likewise if someone wants to be touched because they're more interested in sex than a relationship, and they derive validation from your sexual interest. "It's just their Love Language" is technically correct, but it's the wrong lens to apply to those situations.

In the examples you provide, I would say that it's exactly the right lens to apply to those situations - it's imperative for both parties to understand that those are the factors that matter instead of trying to work out a relationship around them, ignoring those core issues; and this lens allows to understand/specify/communicate it better.

Like, if someone does derive validation from your sexual interest, then that's a quite important thing to understand for the partner (even if for them personally the concept of needing such validation is a bit alien, because their self-worth is filled differently), because that's not going to change easily and is going to be a big factor in making the relationship work. And if someone is materialistic, pretending otherwise won't be helpful and neither will trying to change someone's values, that generally takes huge time and effort and/or crisis events. Of course, obtaining a proper understanding may also mean understanding that the relationship should not continue, but for such relationships that's also a beneficial result.

There may be more effective ways of facilitating this communication and common understanding of the partner's inner needs, e.g. perhaps couple's therapy can do it faster, but that's a quite expensive process and a simplified set of metaphors can be a cheap and useful approach ("A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points") if there's sufficient material to ensure that both partners, likely coming from very different perspectives given that they have this communications problem, get a common understanding of how they understand them.

I think GP would agree that this type of self help book is not a Rosetta Stone and its core truth may be somewhat banal ie think about what makes your partner feel special not only what makes you feel special. Maybe part of the success formula for these pop psyc books is that we need these truths to be wrapped in a story and labeled so we can remember them more easily.

Here's a question: you like the framework. Have you ever seen a specific relationship be saved by it?

However, your objections seem to be about something other than what I'm talking about - what I hear in your responses is something like equivocating "Understand that it's their love language" with "you should accept it unconditionally", especially in the context of abusive relationships, which is definitely not what I'm arguing about. The decision whether a particular relationship is good for both people involved and whether should continue is orthogonal to that aspect, and "love languages" don't/shouldn't affect that decision; But in the context of various one-sided and possibly relationships, however, understanding that (for example) one partner really only cares about sex in this relationship and doesn't care about the other aspects - well, that's useful information to make the decision whether to move on away from the relationship.

I see it's use solely as a means of improving communication, and it's scope limited for couples which have a problem with that communication (which is common) and also a mutual desire to improve it (which is not that common, and already excludes many destined-to-fail relationships), in this regard, it's useful only if applied by the couple, not by one of them. It's definitely not an universal solution - it solves a particular type (though IMHO popular) of miscommunication, and if the couple has fixed those, this book will be useless for any other types of problems in their relationship.

For example, you want to watch a movie together, but neither of you have the same tastes in movies. What do you do?

Because both of you are self-giving, you both say that the other can pick, you're thus in a deadlock.

At some point, there's going to need a compromise, because you can only pick one movie and neither of you happen to like the same movie.

So best you can do is compromise by alternating, this time you watch your preferred movie, next time there's.

Or you compromise by not watching movies together, but seperately.

In many (most?) cases what we call "tastes" -- and especially distastes -- are a way for us to broadcast our identities to the world.

In an intimate, functioning relationship those broadcasts shouldn't be necessary because we know they are, if not fake, at least a proxy for what we want others to think who we really are. Intimacy is about shedding masks.

In a couple one should be able to appreciate, if not outright enjoy, what the other likes.

(Not to say there aren't limits; but it would be a symptom of an abusive relationship if one would insist they always watch what the other truly hates.)

Some years later I'm more appreciative of why other people might like different things now, and I've also picked up on nuances and contexts I used to miss.

But the things I like have barely changed. I don't spend much time "broadcasting them to the world" because why would the world even care what music I listen to?

There's enough overlap with my partner that we can have conversations about certain things we have in common, but there are things and activities that work for her that I'm utterly disinterested in, and vice versa.

We don't expect to share those, and that works for us.

People get bored watching movies and it is not a mask nor identity - it is feeling. Some people genuinely feel bad watching horrrors and it is not identity, it is genuinely feeling bad. I hate cringe in comic super heroes movie and thus dislike them. It is not a mask I wear it is genuinely unpleasant and if alone I would never ever watch that.

The movies creators put a lot of work unto making you experience feelings while watching their movies in fact.

But it's not just about "taste", it's about values. I strongly suspect I won't have many shared values with someone who loves gore. And conflicting values are more likely to break a relationship than incompatible movie tastes.

One person likes superhero movies, the other does not. Is seems that by your worldview it will be an insurmountable barrier to forming a healthy relationship unless someone changes their mind, which seems to be a rather bleak attitude to me. Are you sure we couldn't find countless couples with different movie tastes (or movie values) who, despite this obstacle, are in happy and loving relationships?

Otherwise a marriage is a union of two individuals, not a project for a single joint life.

Of course the above is just a silly example but enlightening.

>> Because both of you are self-giving, you both say that the other can pick, you're thus in a deadlock.

> That is the mistake: thinking of watching a movie as a personal act.

Another mistake might be conceiving of one's "taste in movies" as fixed and unchanging when it isn't. You might be able to find something to like in your partner's preferences, when you didn't before; or find some new type of movie you both like. Making that effort may be what being "self-giving" is in this case.

That means your partner is not self-giving.

Assuming both of you are self-giving, I just don't see a resolution that doesn't involve a compromise.

In a parent/child relationship most wouldn’t call it a compromise to watch cartoons with their kid because a) some cartoons are great and b) even when they aren’t, just being with your kids when they are enjoying something is a wonderful experience.

Yes it’s possible for that to become pathological in a romantic relationship if there is no balance, but if neither partner has any personal fulfillment in letting their significant other enjoy something it’s going to get lonely quickly.

That said, I'm curious about the realism of all this. Just being with your partner when they are enjoying something is a wonderful experience. Is that true? Can this continue to be the case over many many years of a marriage?

The article mentioned a much more extreme scenario than movie watching, having someone walk you through the details of a geometry proof that they came up with. How many times can you enjoy having them walk you through a proof and still think it's a wonderful experience listening to them about this thing that you find so boring and soul crushing and might not even understand any piece of it, yet because of the passion in their voice, you enjoy the time and pretend to be excited and interested?

In my opinion, there's a bucket of how much you can do this for. Once the bucket is depleted, to refill the bucket, you need to either spend some time apart, have them spend time with you doing something of your enjoyment or spend time doing things you both enjoy together.

And so everyone is happy half the time, and you are mutually trying to make each other happy.

That’s fair, supportive, and a good marriage basically.

> Of course, we compromise: by taking turns

And the OP I replied to said that's not a self-giving attitude.

So in my case, taking turn counts as a compromise.

And so this is my point, I don't think compromising means that you're not in a self-giving relationship, in fact, I think it shows that you are, since both of you are considerate of the other and finding ways to please the other in turn.

Under a "self giving" regime, I want to spend time with my partner, enjoying her enjoying the movie she wants to watch. My partner wants to spend time with me enjoying the movie I want to watch. We can't both do that, so we each take turns letting the other one enjoy being with us while we watch the movie we want to watch.

Under the "compromise" option, we each get to watch the movie we want to watch, taking turn and turn about. That is what is important about the event: that we get to watch the movie we want to watch.

I think maybe the movie choice is a pretty trivial aspect of the relationship anyway, the GPs post around the willingness to serve your partner was a lovely insight to what makes a partnership work over the long term, far beyond how you both decide what movie to watch.

(sfbsab)

> Of course, we compromise: by taking turns

I used to love watching horrors. I watched them a lot and that made me less sensitive to them - I needed more scarier and badly looking to feel scared. And it is 100% legitimate for someone else to dislike horrors. To be sensitive to pain on the screen, to not be used to the tensions and anticipation of bad these movies create.

It has nothing to do with whether that horror has redeeming qualities. It does not matter whether it has deep philosophical meaning. The experience of watching it is deeply uncomfortable for some people and that is fine. It does not says anything bad about them.

So if you want to watch a movie together, I just don't see how you could both enjoy it without any compromise.

> So if you want to watch a movie together, I just don't see how you could both enjoy it without any compromise.

It kinda seems like you're setting up the scenario to force a particular result. If both your tastes are so fixed and incompatible that you can't like a movie without your partner disliking it, then maybe decide to do something else besides watch a movie?

This solution is part of the original comment; i.e.: “Or you compromise by not watching movies together, but seperately.”[1].

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28659212

You recognise that it's not about the movie, it's about the activity you do together.

Really, the lengths the threads here are going through to facilitate poor interpersonal interaction are sort of mystifying. Perhaps being a good person (or even just a good friend) is not obvious to everyone, but the information on how to be one definitely is easy to find. How come nobody is finding it?

This seems like a step 2 to me. I think when people try to be giving as a step 1, before their own needs are met, they can end up miserable and resentful. But when your needs are met, giving is natural and joyful.

The NVC assumption is that when two people can identify each other's needs and connect with them, they find that their needs aren't actually in conflict. Compromise isn't necessary. That's the idea in theory at least.

I know people in similar marriages - it works great, as long as the spouse is happy being the dutiful house wife. But I also know people in this situation who are now separated - usually the man/provider is completely blind sided when their ever loving, house wife says one day "no" and just walks out. They had no idea there was an inequality in the first place, and assumed their spouse is happy like this.

I personally believe that when marrying someone, "marry your equal" is incredibly important advice. Marry someone of similar earning power, with similar career and life accomplishments. This helps ensures a equal relationship that has the greatest chance of success.

You confuse 'equality' for 'symmetry', and this is extremely flawed.

Even in non-romantic teams, the entire purpose of cooperation is to perform different roles in parallel. This is fundamental to human existence.

>I know people in similar marriages - it works great, as long as the spouse is happy being the dutiful house wife. But I also know people in this situation who are now separated - usually the man/provider is completely blind sided when their ever loving, house wife says one day "no" and just walks out. They had no idea there was an inequality in the first place, and assumed their spouse is happy like this.

....and as long as the husband is happy being a dutiful provider.

Getting blind sided by a partner suddenly walking out? They assumed their partner was happy? This is almost a parody of a bad marriage.

>I personally believe that when marrying someone, "marry your equal" is incredibly important advice. Marry someone of similar earning power, with similar career and life accomplishments. This helps ensures a equal relationship that has the greatest chance of success.

IMO, this doesn't address the nightmare scenario you described in your second paragraph, and sounds more likely to make you vulnerable to it.

If you got blind sided by your partner because the two of you were 'assuming the other was happy', you started deeply fucking up years ago and making sure your partner was a close rival in earning career progression had almost nothing to do with it.

Eh. You should marry someone you love and respect, but you are defining "equal" like "clone."

Personally, I am driven by knowledge, growth, ambition, etc. I used to think these are my values and looked for the same in women I dated. So I ended up dating a bunch of CEOs, a famous professor, etc. But while it was very interesting, it wasn't additive.

The woman I actually married is no slouch in earning and intelligence but the things she values are very different from mine. She values creating a home, family connections etc in a way that I didn't know to, but benefit from. It does mean we have a different natural division of labor at home etc but the bigger deal is that we both bring a lot that the other person needs to the table. Life is not without it's conflicts but it's working out much better than if I was stuck with another me

An equal relationship is going to vary depending on who you ask, and as long as both partners agree, then you’re set.

It was not about educational attainment, but about assumed silent expectation that partner does all the housework.

The benefits of the income are shared with the entire household and represent their contribution. It seems reasonable for the other partner to shoulder most of the housework (the benefits of which are also shared with the entire household). The opposite is what would seem unreasonable to me.

For clarity, I’m not saying the employed partner never has to wash a dish or put their dirty socks in the basket.

Unless explicitly arranged and agreed upon by both in advance, it is unfair to assume the partner should be doing it all and that you should be doing only stuff you enjoy.

You can still be equal partners even with vastly disparate incomes simply by treating each other as equals. It’s entirely in your control, as a couple.

If my wife wanted to work a job that earns a fraction of what mine does, I’d still split all the housework equitably because she is my equal no matter what job she works.

There is a point where you hire help and this becomes moot.

Below that point, it comes to how you want to solve the finance problem as a couple IMO: if both your salaries are required, then obviously it means a full split.

Anecdotally - my wife chose to remain home and help raise our child / take care of the home and this turned out to be a force multiplier for me. I don’t think I would’ve made it to where I am, made whatever I made, built all my time sink hobbies without that decision.

It comes down to communication and being truthful to yourself Re: why do you want that job? If it is a passion, you should go for it irrespective of the earnings. If it is just an income, you’re just working for a random person instead of your own family. That’s a tough line to cross, but it worked for us with enough comms.

Your wife and you situation sounds like falling into "mutually agreed upon in advance".

There is a point beyond which earning potential stops being a differentiator: you both have enough that it doesn’t matter. I agree there will be some hard conversations to get out of the preset habits though.

Till the point where the earning is necessary for your lifestyle - I can see how the first and second concept will play out: but that’s the trade off you’re taking for the benefits I mentioned.

I do agree all of this is based on the mutual agreement part. I was just pointing out it isn’t as dire as you say :)

If you're "keeping score" in compensation with your life partner, that seems deeply unhealthy. I'd love for my partner to make some multiple of what I make; we could retire that much earlier.

The vast majority of people don’t genuinely enjoy their 40 hours plus 6 hours of commuting to their income-generating job.

We do it because we like food with our meals.

People who loose their jobs, even if partner earns enough for them to not be in major stress, are unhappy after a week or too. They don't tend to be happy in the long term.

Many jobs and bosses sux. And people in them generally want better job rather then no job. They feel bad when being unemplyed long term.

Most employed people don't enjoy coming home to household work. No one, actually. That is why those are such frequent strain of relationship - cause people rarely like then.

But I think that you really need new job. Cause mine is not 8.5 hours of suckage. People on this forums are not struggling miners in bad economy having no choice but to put up with abusive boss. (And I know miner who claimed he loved his job, but that is one guy).

Anyway, if it is about insisting one has to stay at home, I don't want to be the one stay at home. Because I would not like it. And I would also feel economically in trap - dependent and helpless in case of issues.

This seems like quite the assumption.

My baseline assumption for a functional relationship would be that the partner that has the least time to help with housework would try to pick up the parts of it that the other partner least enjoys.

The original comment and rwsponse were neither about stay at home wife nor about educational differences.

One could just as well find inequality the other way - that the poster is going above and beyond to improve the family's financial situation.

The point being - who cares? If the division of labor works for them, amazing. My wife probably spends more time with the kid than I do, I definitely spend more time fixing shit around the house. I, my wife, the kid, and the house are all better off with this situation than any other combination, nobody is walking out. Maybe the house.

It sounds like you think 2 workaholics make a better marriage because they are both "accomplished" and both focused on work, also sounds elitist.

But, it does not necessary describes his situation. It sounds like two people with different initial interests.

Still, kids become gradually more independent. And some housework can be outsourced (landscaping, no yard, surface cleaning). A career in the marketplace is often 40+ years before reaching retirement or financial independence.

> Kids take a huge amount of time, and the pandemic has limited school and daycare choices for many.

I know couples that split it and the ones where it falls on woman. I know couples where women are resentful that work sacrifice is disproportionately on them. Women who would prefer job. And woman being intentionally at home and wanting it so.

But like, only husband being employed and he doing half homeschooling is something I did not seen.

Sorry but this is incredibly stupid advice. There are no magical formulas or flow charts for who to marry.

'Equal' in the sense of outlook is fair but you cant judge a person by external metrics.

So again, team play comes down to self-giving, because you are not in control of the other person.

“It does not need to compete with or replace you or I.”

My wife and I have different preferences for different things. We each routinely compromise by going along with the others preferences. We aim to do that in such as way as to achieve a healthy balance, where each of us feel satisfied and have our needs met. We do this by using communication.

To my knowledge, neither of us feel any animosity towards those compromises, because we’re both very interested in taking care of each other, and meeting each other’s needs.

Is this self-giving or self-serving? It just seems like using different vocabulary for the same thing.

Congrats and may you have many more together!

We do have a baseline of shared philosophies and views but even there we often find that we slightly disagree on details.

When I hear people talk about marriage (or any commitment) these days, I sometimes wonder if they're from a distant planet. When any long-term commitment is some form of oppression from which we must be liberated, bonds like marriage cannot work. This is justified in the pursuit of happiness. Ironically, those who seem happiest are those willing to make (and keep) binding commitments.

And that too depends on the type of problem the couple faces which is not static and changes from year to year. The same couple that complement each other in one situation can be completely hopeless together in another.

So its all about Awareness and Communication of what your traits, needs, strenths and weaknesses are.

Obviously thats non trivial cause the chimp brain is not really designed for such things. The brain looks outward not inward. It takes much more work to look inward.

So all chimps fail a test to produce a list of their personality traits and needs, strengths and weakness wrt to different situations that matches what their partner will produce of them and vice versa.

Couples that minimize that gap, and its lifelong hard work, are usually the most long lasting.

Once the commitment to honor my wife and word is most important, it becomes an anchor in my life to the waves of wants and desires which are ever changing. Feeling lonely in my marriage, well, I'm in this thing for life, how can I productively address this with my wife? Or, maybe my expectations of her are unrealistic, can I find friends or interests elsewhere while still honoring and remaining committed to her? If our romance becomes dry, then I work to address that with her. If I notice she's not happy or unsatisfied, then I need to care for her and help if I can. If I can't, then I'm just going to be there with her, walking through dark times, because that's my commitment, and it's loving and honorable.

My desires are often fleeting and dishonorable...selfish and wanton. It's good to deny them and pursue more honorable things with my life. The best things in life, the best stories, are those that come after trial and sacrifice. So much of our modern culture is empty and destructive because we've put self, our wants...our desires, in the place of utmost importance. Not having the wisdom to see that philosophy is like dedicating oneself to getting water from a broken cistern.

Furthermore, one of the best things a father can do for his children is to love their mother this way.

You add abstract good adjectives to that idea (honorable, wise, beautiful) and bad adjectives to the opposite (wanton, selfish, etc), but you don't really justify that assignation.

I understand that thinking short term by default can lead to harm or missing something in the long term. But there's a whole jump from that to thinking that something has value just for being long lasting. Following your analogy, I wouldn't want to keep reaching from water in a well that went dry long ago.

>The best things in life, the best stories, are those that come after trial and sacrifice.

I'd say that even if that is often true, it is often difficult to tell trials and sacrifices apart from refusal to move on.

And to be clear, since this can be both a philosophical conversation and one that touches personal matters,I don't by any means imply a personal judgement of your personal choices - I'm just speaking about abstract ideas.

1. Unhappy couple that stayed together and worked out their problems

2. Unhappy couple that stayed together and remained miserable

3. Unhappy couple that split and are happy with their decision

4. Unhappy couple that split and now regret having done that

You cannot deny that there's beauty in 1, and I think when you made your comment number 2 is probably what was going through your mind.

In any case I did connect with OPs comment, and do think that things have value because they last long. People don't optimize for happiness in life, they optimize for other abstract concepts like fulfillment and purpose etc. Marriage and family can give a great sense of purpose and more fulfillment than any fleeting romance (or selfish decision-making). Life is long and full of ups and downs, marriage (just like religion and children) can serve as a great anchor point.

I think that all four options are definitely possible, but that people have a bias for maintaining their circle of comfort, and justify that fear of the unknown.

As for

>You cannot deny that there's beauty in 1

I do deny it; or to be clear, I think it is a story that we've been conditioned to prefer over the others, with sometimes disastrous results for everyone involved. I see the same beauty in any other option that ends up with a person living a great life they don't regret.

I think we'd have a better world if people focused on finding their best possible life without a notion that this choice is the default, more likely option for a live well lived.

Speaking personally, and perhaps it is indeed my conditioning, but at 25+ years of marriage I am living that beauty in 1 every day and I know without a doubt it has led me to my best possible life.

If the default happens to work for you, that's awesome, and in fact it's probably what will work for most people - otherwise it wouldn't be the default.

I'm just against considering alternative ways of finding happiness or purpose as consolation prizes, bittersweet stories, or somehow less valuable or beautiful than others. There's effort in keeping a marriage working for decades; there's also effort in daring to leave an unhappy comfort zone to find better ways, or simply to learn to live life in your own terms if "the one" never appears for you.

Everyone is winging it, and the only beauty is in finding happiness while causing the least harm to others (imho). Do the best you can with the information you have, maybe it works out, maybe it doesn’t.

I believe both 1 and 3 are preferable to 2 or 4, so I don't find this trope particularly helpful. It doesn't really matter if 1 is best or not, since it's not going to be possible for everyone.

Another way to look at it, constraints breed creativity. You sometimes come up with better solutions when you don't have total freedom.

My maternal grandparents had been divorced and remarried three times.

Guess which set were happier with their station in life when I knew them? In my experience, pursuing your immediate happiness at the expense of long term fulfillment is a losing wager every time.

My worldview has been shaped by the Bible and, specifically, a reformed evangelical theology. Inherent to that worldview is the belief that my life is not my own, I was designed for a purpose, and my life will have the most meaning (not necessarily the most happiness) when I operate to fulfill that purpose.

> I can't see why you would want to remain less happy (or more miserable) that you'd otherwise potentially be

I don't believe one's personal happiness is a sufficient measurement to optimize one's life around. My worldview is shaped by different questions than, "Does this make me happy?" Even though this belief is, for me, rooted in religion, I actually think there is plenty of evidence for the truly objective to recognize the danger inherent in maximizing that metric.

I have biblical "justifications" for those ideas and for the adjectives I use (honorable, wise, beautiful), but a full defense is beyond what can reasonably be discussed here. "The Meaning of Marriage" by Tim Keller or "Sacred Marriage" by Gary Thomas would further elaborate on these ideas specifically in the context of marriage. TBH, I wasn't really trying to justify my beliefs in the parent comment b/c It's too hard in this context. I just figured I'd share what I thought and let the upvotes and downvotes work it out. :)

I'm not advocating commitment to marriage simply for the sake that it ends up being long lasting. I think there are benefits to the spouses, the children, and to society to not only stick it out, but to work on improving it. One of the things that I guess didn't come out clearly in my original comment was that, if you are in the marriage for life, and you are going to honor that commitment, it's a great reason to invest in that marriage and make it as good as it can be.

> I'd say that even if that is often true, it is often difficult to tell trials and sacrifices apart from refusal to move on.

When moving on is simply not an option, there's no debate, no wrestling. It's not refusal, really. It's more like war. I'm not surprised by the war, by the trial...by the hardship and sacrifice necessary. But I am committed to not leaving my partner behind..we'll go through it together, till death do us part. I think there's glory in that...I think most people feel it and want to be a part of a story like that. I think our attraction to such things is built in, wired into how God has made us. But when we celebrate self and personal happiness, that attraction gets re-wired, and as a society and as individuals we start loving attitudes and actions that really aren't lovable. Things that, in war, we would usually call cowardice.

Not every deserter in wartime is a coward and not every person who gets divorced is selfish. My wife was married and divorced before we met and were married. Complexity exists, wisdom needs to be used, my intention is not to judge. My goal is simply to share the perspective that commitment and steadfast love are better than selfishness. That optimizing for personal happiness is a bad metric. I hope that some will be able to hear and embrace that message...will be able to sense the honor and glory inherent in that perspective, even if I can't well articulate an objective analytical justification for it.

Thanks for the dialogue.

> I don't believe one's personal happiness is a sufficient measurement to optimize one's life around. (...)I actually think there is plenty of evidence for the truly objective to recognize the danger inherent in maximizing that metric.

I do agree that there are more things to take into account than personal happiness, to guide one's life - I could see for example how someone would sacrifice their life for a better cause for example. I just don't see any moral reason that would apply here, since the act of breaking the vows doesn't harm anyone if both partners are in a position of unhappiness. I do see however how you can see those moral reasons there, since marriage for you it's more than a symbol that you want to commit to the relationship, and it has religious implications.

> I think there are benefits to the spouses, the children, and to society to not only stick it out, but to work on improving it. One of the things that I guess didn't come out clearly in my original comment was that, if you are in the marriage for life, and you are going to honor that commitment, it's a great reason to invest in that marriage and make it as good as it can be.

I partially agree, and to be clear I wouldn't defend the position of not fighting to get the marriage to work. I just think that some of the reasons why marriages no longer work are simply not fixable by putting in effort, and that the belief that there must necessarily be a fix if only you work harder can be dangerous to - people can end up in a position where not only they remain unhappy, but also exhausted from their sacrifices and accumulate feelings of guilt since if the marriage doesn't work is because they haven't done enough.

IMO, much of the world's arguments are a result of starting from very different axioms. I feel like too often people don't realize those "axioms" or as I would put it, those worldviews, are the real source of the disagreement. The actual disagreements themselves are just a result of approaching life or the particular issue with very different set of foundational beliefs and values.

But finding common agreement is, perhaps, not required or even the most valuable outcome. I believe there is value in simply being able to have those discussions, reasonably...respectfully, even if agreement itself is elusive.

The only redeeming fact is the commitment to your children, which is honorable and admirable.

I think it's interesting that commitment to children is honorable but commitment to spouse is not. My oldest son, due to selfish life choices, has caused me far more misery than my wife ever has. I still love him, and want good things for him, but my life is now very separate from his. And, perhaps, that's how it should be for children. It's expected that they grow up and leave the nest. But my wife is the one I made a life long commitment to. That seems like the higher priority to me.

FWIW, I'm not advocating staying in a miserable marriage. I'm advocating for, having already committed to staying in the marriage (when you took your vows) do everything possible to have a robust and joy-filled marriage.

My opinion, you should be a thousand percent more committed to your children. Your wife is an adult.

You brought your children into this life. You owe them everything.

Most husbands and wives would sacrifice themselves and each for their children.

Although, I understand the subtle distinction that once your children have grown and moved on, that you still have a vow to your wife/husband. I think that’s important.

Interesting topic of the stages of marriage and parenthood.

People’s terminal preferences are the root of who they are. There is no goal that exists beyond one’s terminal preferences. You can prefer to obey some moral distinction, but you prefer it because that increases your happiness/life satisfaction (or at least, you have absorbed enough second-hand examples that you believe it will increase your happiness/life satisfaction.) If it didn’t, why would your brain ever bother to spit out a “you should do it” answer?

> My desires are often fleeting and dishonorable...selfish and wanton.

I think you’re confusing societal mores that you’ve chosen to adhere to (e.g. monogamy) with some sort of objective moral function that all humans will somehow be judged by regardless of whether anyone is doing the judging. If you’re sleeping around (the thing I’m assuming you’re talking about here) but you’re in a polyamorous relationship, with a partner who experiences compersion rather than jealousy when people outside of your relationship do things to make you happy — is that act still “dishonorable” or “wanton” of you? What would those words mean, for that to be true? If everyone important to you wants you to enjoy yourself, and you do enjoy yourself, then who is saying no?

And, given that, if your marriage partner does say no to something that would make you happy, how is that anything other than an incompatibility between you; something that could have been avoided by ensuring compatibility before commitment?

IMHO, you are rationalizing staying in a relationship with a partner whose preferences do overlap with yours enough for life with them to be generally pleasant; but where in some ways their preferences are extremely incompatible with your own. But, because you are embedded in a society mostly consisting of potential partners who also have those same extremely-incompatible preferences to your own, it doesn’t feel like you’d actually have any luck finding a partner whose preferences cohere more closely to your own. You satisficed, and now are attempting to construct a philosophy that makes satisficing seem optimal, so that you can have one fewer regret.

People should really spend more time looking outside their own culture for partners. It can turn out that what is “dishonorable” or “wanton” to you, is just regular respectable behavior in another culture in another part of the world. The objectivity of social mores is an illusion created by cultural isolation.

(FYI: this is just the standard University “introduction to meta-ethics” stuff, just applied to romantic social mores in particular.)

This is circular reasoning. You have baked in the assumption that people operate by maximizing their individual self-interest.

A simple answer to why one might do it, even if it didn’t maximize their own happiness/satisfaction, is that they are genuinely focused on a less individualistic aim.

Self-sacrifice in service of higher value doesn’t necessarily make one happy, but it can be part of one’s nature to recognize that one’s own sacrifice benefits others in some way.

If someone martyrs themselves, then in the moment they do that, they’re thinking that that is a good thing to do — i.e. the reward calculation in their brain comes out in favour of doing that thing instead of anything else they could be doing instead. They expect that good things will happen due to this—things that cohere with their preferences. This is still true even if they don’t live to see those good things happen, because brains are adaptation executors, not fitness maximizers: we prefer the kinds of things that made our lineage successful, not the things that make us successful.

But those are still preferences! “Being of use to others” is a preference. You do it because that’s the thing your brain releases reward chemicals when you do. This is what you are terming something being “part of one’s nature”; “your nature” is equivalent to “your preference function.”

And, if you can assume that to be true for a second, then I can restate my point in terms of it: many of the things people have terms for in their preference functions are based on adhering to an abstract role or identity, something like “an honorable person”, their understanding of which was inculcated by local, culturally-contextual societal mores.

For most people, doing something “because it’s honorable” isn’t a post-hoc rationalization of some spiritual connection to the concept of honor that informs their life. Instead, it’s an instrumental preference — a thing you do in order to work toward some higher-level preference you have — where the higher-level preference is “cohere more closely with my own understanding of what it means to be honorable.”

In these cases, people don’t like X and dislike Y because their brain is directly telling them that X is good and Y isn’t (where they then notice a class of such preferential distinctions they’re making, and then call that class of distinctions “honor” because it seems to be the same as a class of distinctions that other people call “honor.”) Instead, people like X and dislike Y because they learned a concept like “honor” from their societal context, and they learned that their society considers X to be honorable and Y to be dishonorable; and so they then prefer to do X and not do Y because they want to live in the image of what they believe honor to be, as learned from their society.

For these people, if they experience other cultures’ conceptions of these abstract concepts, and through that learn more about what these abstract concepts can mean to different people, this is usually enough to shift how they understand the abstract concept itself; and due to that, they will usually end up with different instrumental preferences—because now what they have learned “is honorable”, is a different set of things.

(Compare and contrast: etiquette. “What is etiquette” can feel objective if you never leave the culture you were born into. But you’ll have a very different idea of things being or not being “polite” if you experience a variety of different cultures that all have developed different customs around etiquette.)

Nope. That’s you baking in the assumption that they are making a calculation about reward.

That’s an axiom of your way of analyzing the situation. Nothing more.

These sorts of rationalizations against honorable behavior such as commitment are what is driving the degradation of society as we know it. These institutions have formed over hundreds (if not thousands) of years, and are ultimately present to sustain and propagate life itself.

This is I think a fantastic observation about a lot of fiction that deals with personal relationships today. What bugs me about so many of them is how narcissistic they are in the sense that the question all of them seem to pose is how relationships can be managed like a project, almost like a self-help career guide.

As the article points out Bergman's original piece asked fundamental questions about the nature (and limits) of human connections. From the first two episodes of the new version I've seen it has exactly the kind of atmosphere the article describes, how marriage is 'managed' and organized in relationship to work, careers and so forth.

Nevertheless, I can't help but notice that the writer of the article describes herself as lonely, having had "trouble forming friendships", "inconsiderate", and having "love for confusion".

The fact that she feels lonely in her marriage speaks to me more of her innate nature than her marriage. I wonder whether most non-optimal marriages are like this -- people bring their own problems to the marital table, in hopes that the problems will be solved, and become invariably disappointed that it doesn't solve them.

Regardless of what the underlying cause is, my sympathies to the author. Loneliness is a terrible thing to experience.

I mean, often my wife is the only person I see for a several hour stretch. And it's somewhat sad and lonely when I experience something and it's not really something I can share fully with her -- because it's deep and specialized and nuanced in somewhere that I've obsessed.

But-- how can anyone expect that of anyone? How boring would life be if I'd found such a close twin of myself that all the weird, esoteric stuff that amuses me made sense to her? She brings her own perspective and abilities, and the cost of this is that I don't get to see myself and my little obsessions mirrored every second in her.

A partner can bring an awful lot, but they can't bring everything all of the time.

Show her some video on YouTube about a random topic, sure she doesnt, have to like it. But just hearing the video presenter from another room will be enough for her to freak out 'urghh are you listening to thatttt guy again !!! I cant stand him he is so boring such a **.'

Going on a roadtrip ? You better tune the radio to 'something good' the first time, Else it will be a 1min lashing of how boring,stupid and irrating the person's voice or topic is !

Just ask/say you want to listen to something else, I dont need to hear all the rest.

I never was/is much of a spiritual person, but that ex showed me how the 'room energy' can change in a instant !

Marriage - sure it can be great, but be careful of ending up in a 'military state' at home. Your mental health wont survive it !

But by the time I've explained the 15 pieces of background knowledge needed to understand what I mean... I'm not even excited anymore. :D

We've got a whole lot of common ground-- she's a mechanical engineer, and now we're both involved quite a bit in education and coaching. That stuff we can talk about. But late last night I came up with a clever trick to collapse some tedious keypad-scanning-code down into something surprisingly tidy, and in that moment all I could really say was "I got the keypad on those boards for the robotics kids working in a really nice way".

     And it's somewhat sad and lonely when I 
     experience something and it's not really 
     something I can share fully with her

When Person B is happy and/or geeking out over something...

Person A doesn't have to love or even care about every detail of the thing itself. But Person A should be genuinely excited that Person B is happy about something and should take some interest in the thing, if only to understand why it makes Person B happy.

I have had a lot of bad relationships.

But it's not the same as bragging or complaining about it to my nerd buddies, you know?

At one point, this used to really bum me out, but it was really an unrealistic expectation.

They don’t really have to understand it, just get the general idea.

If someone is a great listener but never really responds I feel like I’m carrying on by myself, I might as well be talking to a tree.

We form partnerships and relationships not to have our counter-parties do the work for us, but so that we can discuss, share,console, and motivate each other in our respective journeys.

I don't think the fundamental test of a relationship often is what we do for each other, although of course in sickness and in health comes into that.

I think the fundamental test is what we discuss with each other.

Whether the most important questions in life are something two people think about together, that's what matters.

Her personality really shows through the article - it's highly amusing. She's an energetic philosophy wonk.

To me, this is just a classic case of a husband who doesn't realize that he can never let boredom creep in and isn't keeping things fresh and having enough sex.

I mean, personal knowledge of the person aside, it this truly the typical case? I think more often than not if there's something missing, both parties are culpable. Sure, there are situations where one person's sex drive is lower and this causes friction, but the truth is that it's harder still to have two problematic personalities capitulate at the same time to resolve the issue. In other words, in my experience there is a lack of communication from both sides.

For example, if you're a nerd for philosophy, find some friends who are too, talk to them about it, join online communities, etc. Same thing if you're a nerd for geometry.

More importantly I'd say is your partners ability to support you in having those other outlets and relationships or opportunities for doing those things as well. That's what I'd consider love.

Do the things you both enjoy together, encourage each other to also find people and ways to do the things you don't both enjoy seperately, and be okay with that.

Now, if there's nothing you both enjoy doing or talking about, well, I'm sorry to say, but why are you together? Such relationships cannot survive beyond the initial lust.

If one or both of you have grown to enjoy different things and because of that no longer enjoy much in common, well that's how people grow appart, and it's why some relationship do eventually end naturally, and it could be time to move on, and that's okay too.

I don't quite understand such behavior, to be honest. We know that we shouldn't bitterly criticize friends, nor should we use absolute words like "never" or "always" on them. We also know that we should find common interests among friends, and it's okay if we occasionally get it wrong, like this one time you took your pacifist friends to a paintball tournament. Then, why can't we treat our spouse, someone we took an oath to spend the rest of our life with, like our friends? We learn how to conduct crucial conversation and nonviolent communication in our job, then why can't we do the same in our home? I puzzles me to no end.

I say all of this as a single 27-year-old who has never been in a committed relationship, and has no plans to enter one in the future. Perhaps that means I lack the authority to weigh in on this topic, and perhaps it means I practice what I preach.

If you made it to your 20’s there was a good chance you’d make it to 60 or 70.

> Those records show that child mortality remained high. But if a man got to the age of 21 and didn’t die by accident, violence or poison, he could be expected to live almost as long as men today: from 1200 to 1745, 21-year-olds would reach an average age of anywhere between 62 and 70 years – except for the 14th Century, when the bubonic plague cut life expectancy to a paltry 45.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181002-how-long-did-anc...

If you dig further you can see that these numbers are about male aristocracy in England between 1200 and 1745:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jIMHCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA8&lpg=...

The vast majority of people didn't witness their 70th birthday before modern times.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2587384/?report...

The issue is that people aren't married to their best friends. You have to like the person more than you love them.

With regards to the notion that we live too longer for lifelong monogamy: that's probably true for some people and not for others. I do think that if the human lifespan were stretched to 1000 years, but society were otherwise the same, few people would remain in a single monogamous relationship for the entire duration.

An easy example in your early-mid 20s is the prospect of moving for work and education, and forgoing long-distance, but we can set this one aside because it's a heavy extraneous circumstance.

The early relationships I had carried a more laissez-faire "let's wait and see" attitude, at least on my part. Most people will not end up marrying their high-school sweetheart, but it's good to date around to discover ourselves and others. What I didn't count on was that a) emotional bonds will happen almost every time, and break ups will hit hard, and b) wait-and-see doesn't work very well for the long-run. People don't change that much. If you're committing in the hopes that you will feel more strongly about someone later, don't. And be honest about the way you feel as soon as you know it. Respect your time and others'.

I carried that non-committal approach into my 20s because I was an emotional fuck-up with lots of anxiety and plagued with insomnia. I couldn't be alone. It wasn't until later that I pulled the plug on a relationship and decided I wouldn't jump on another until I felt more certain about them. Now I'm married. I think we take for granted how difficult being alone can be for some people owing to x y struggles, which is unfair to their partners.

Relationships take work, both parties need to invest in each other. There will be times when things feel more stagnant and familiar, and times of great intimacy, etc. A common apprehension about commitment you hear is "won't I still be attracted to other people?". Yes, you will. It won't matter. "How do I know I'm not settling?". What? It's either a happy relationship or it isn't. Trying to min/max superficial attributes is a fool's errand. Tend to your garden. Rewards are way greater in a loving relationship.

After you've met people around the world and had fine food and hiked tall mountains, it's like, what's next?

Not necessarily marriage and/or kids. But probably some kind of sharing, and marriage and kids are a great way to do that.

But, then it also occurred to me that someone who agreed with my assertion would, basically by definition, not have that experience, so it's a catch 22.

I'm legitimately not sure which side of that is more important.

1. Unless there are kids involved, in which case the fallout extends beyond the relationship and has wider second-and-third-order effects on society. Aren't something like 40% of children in single-parent households in the US? And aren't there significant statistics showing that especially fatherless sons are over-represented in juvenile crime, etc...? Those situations might arise less if the population didn't have such a blasé attitude to starting and ending romantic entanglements.

2. Studies have shown that increasing numbers of sex partners has a permanent deleterious effect on a person's ability to pair-bond, with more serious psychological impacts on women than men. (sorry, don't have a citation handy) So it is not a purely "good and healthy" situation for people to be regularly growing tired of their partners.

I'm 38, essentially polygynous, with my primary female one I selected almost 10 years ago for character traits that I assessed as optimal for raising children and managing a household. So far, so good on both fronts. We have some SLIGHT overlap in our movie tastes such that we can usually find something mutually satisfying (mostly lighthearted action movies with a touch of romance). If I want to watch something extra graphic (13 Assassins, original Robocop, etc...) I'll either watch it alone or call one of the side-chicks that is comfortable with that stuff.

I don't know why I am laughing at this phrasing.

Btw, since we are on hacker news, what's the probability of a randomly choosen guy from a normal urban population sample being able to have side chicks and one fulfilling primary relationship?

Because it sounds like a robot giving relationship advice?

Probably less than 10%. I recognize that my peer group is not a representative slice of a normal distribution.

Your brother and sister in law are in many ways better than true friends (they’re always available and are technically part of your family so there’s no jealousy). Of course if you have siblings of your own this works too.

I appreciated this observation. I have been married for 26 years. I am more expressive to my wife with my words, "I love you" etc. However, her actions speak louder than my words. I seem to be wired for me first where she is wired for me next. I'm trying to get better at being more helpful rather than grand gestures.

The general idea is that there are many (the book outlines 5) ways to express love. If you express love one way and your spouse in another way, you may simply miscommunicate. Your anecdote seems to map perfectly to the "love languages" that the author outlines: you'd be a "words of affirmation" type and she's an "acts of service" type. You need to focus on being helpful because "acts of service" moves the needle for her. She needs to be more verbal because "words of affirmation" move the needle for you. And neither you of you should mistake the behavior of the other as being loveless - it's just not expressed in an effective manner.

Marrying my wife is the smartest thing I've ever done. We have three very young children (all three 5 and under), never get to go out, never get a break, and are taking an absolute ass-kicking between kids getting sick, potty-training, and all the other normal stuff you deal with. And I've never been more content and happier in my life.

"His father was a conservative parish minister with strict ideas of parenting. Ingmar was locked up in dark closets for infractions such as wetting himself."

I came to find out how his own marriage went. At first, I thought the only reference to his wife was that his name were inscribed under his wife's tomb several years before his death. But, that was because I assumed his film listing would come after his personal life. Scrolling down shows that he was married five times.