[HN Gopher] How relationship satisfaction changes across your li...
___________________________________________________________________
How relationship satisfaction changes across your lifetime
Author : terrycody
Score : 265 points
Date : 2022-02-19 05:39 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (greatergood.berkeley.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (greatergood.berkeley.edu)
| Cenk wrote:
| This is the paper they're talking about:
| https://oa.mg/work/10.1037/bul0000342
|
| Fulltext here: https://doi.apa.org/fulltext/2022-16081-001.pdf
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| It's an interesting article, but it seems they're extrapolating a
| lot from very little signal.
|
| Look at the y-axis on the graphs. The average value for
| "relationship satisfaction" looks to be around 79%, but the
| variation over time only appears to go from a low of around 77%
| to a high of 83% (eyeballing it).
|
| Basically +/- 3%.
|
| There's barely any signal there. A variation of a couple percent
| up or down might indicate something small on a large enough
| sample size, but it's basically nothing in the big picture.
| e4e78a06 wrote:
| If you've ever done a social sciences study as a participant in
| your undergrad years you know these stats are complete BS.
| People just try to get it over with as soon as possible and
| click fast through surveys. Ratings are incredibly subjective
| and there basically is no objective measurement. The authors of
| the studies go in with preconceived notions of what the results
| should look like based on the existing literature.
|
| It reminds me of a famous racial bias study taught in
| "Leadership" courses in which the authors found that people had
| slower reaction times to pictures of black people and came to
| the conclusion that this meant we must have some innate bias
| against black people. Zero attempt to control for the image
| brightness, contrast, or any other potential explanatory
| factors.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| > It reminds me of a famous racial bias study taught in
| "Leadership" courses in which the authors found that people
| had slower reaction times to pictures of black people and
| came to the conclusion that this meant we must have some
| innate bias against black people. Zero attempt to control for
| the image brightness, contrast, or any other potential
| explanatory factors.
|
| Look, the IAT (implicit association test), which you are
| presumably talking about, has a lot of problems, but that
| ain't one of them. Pretty much all of the things you have
| talked about have been examined in multiple, independent
| studies.
|
| It doesn't seem to replicate massively well in terms of
| behavioural impacts, but to suggest that social scientists
| don't control for obvious things is just false.
|
| That being said, the US approach for getting social science
| participants is insane, and should be destroyed.
| goethes_kind wrote:
| Of course this does not take into account all the many of us who
| never had a fun time dating in our 20s. Are we such a tiny
| minority? I can say with mathematical certainty that no decade
| will be worst than my 20s.
| jsqu99 wrote:
| I'm with you. In my 20's, I was crippled with anxiety when
| trying to talk to any female I was interested in. After two
| marriages (very happy in my second), I feel like I could go out
| do pretty well if I were single. I wish I had my present
| personality/confidence w/ my better-looking younger self (i'm
| almost 52 now).
| pier25 wrote:
| I'm 42 now and I wish I could go back to my 20s with my
| current wisdom, confidence, etc. I was such an idiot and made
| so many mistakes in pretty much all areas of my life.
| hhsbdbdbdbdb wrote:
| Please share your wisdom. I am 25 with horrible anxiety. I
| have been working a job I don't like for over a year
| because I can't get an offer. I either look way too anxious
| in the interviews or don't even show up due to fear.
| brimble wrote:
| Easier said than done, but I think the key is learning to
| (selectively!) not give a shit. It's crudely put, but is
| the gist of what a lot of self-help stuff is, including
| fancy-pants stuff like Stoicism.
|
| The blocks are _purely_ in your head. Bad interview? It
| 'll be forgotten by everyone but you in a week or two, if
| even that long, unless we're talking something
| outlandishly catastrophic ("... and then his tie _caught
| on fire_! "). Awkward when talking to a stranger? They'll
| forget you existed by the morning.
|
| One helpful exercise can be to think through the _actual
| harm_ --not how you'll feel about it, but all external-
| to-you harm--from a worst-likely-case scenario. Interview
| when you already have a job? The harm approaches zero.
| Talking to a stranger? Ditto. The harm of those is almost
| entirely something you _do to yourself_.
|
| One simple way to practice social skills is to play
| little games when things are extremely low-stakes. Like,
| "today I'm going to compliment a stranger on something",
| or (a tad more advanced) "today I'm going to find out
| what a stranger's favorite sports team is", or whatever.
| Really little efforts are all it (usually) takes to
| reduce social anxiety quite a bit, it's just that lots of
| people never even try that much.
|
| As for interviews specifically, the usual advice is "do
| practice interviews until no longer anxious".
| pier25 wrote:
| I suffered from anxiety too in my 20s. Between 14 to 29
| years were the worst years of my life (so far). Since
| then, life has been getting better.
|
| Something that caused me a lot of suffering was a feeling
| that I was running out of time. I see that now, but back
| then I couldn't even describe this anxiety. I couldn't
| even realize the anxiety in me. It's like there was no
| life after 30. This made me make a lot of mistakes and
| waste a lot of time because I was obsessed with achieving
| results instead of focusing on the process.
|
| I've been thinking a lot about 20 year old me lately. To
| the point that I'm even considering writing a book, a
| newsletter, or something.
| kingcharles wrote:
| I feel for you. I can tell you issues like this seem to
| diminish with age, but that doesn't help your situation
| now. Your anxiety is so bad that it's having an
| incredibly negative effect on your life. Can you get
| professional help?
| niek_pas wrote:
| Please don't use the word 'female' to refer to women.
| mrits wrote:
| Given one of the top threads on reddit today is a discussion
| between thousands of males that have given up on the modern
| dating scene, I doubt you are the minority.
| 9530jh9054ven wrote:
| I'd hesitate to say that it's the majority though. Reddit
| tends to select for those that would spend a great deal of
| time on the internet, and a thread that would be about asking
| the issues with modern dating would probably select for those
| that have had issues with said dating that are frustrated
| enough to talk about it. Survivorship bias is very much so an
| issue in a discussion thread like that.
| fleddr wrote:
| Well, isn't that basically reddit: insecure young men?
| Bilal_io wrote:
| I think thousands are still in the minority. And even among
| those you'll have some that give up on giving up.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Reddit is _not_ a cross-section of the population.
|
| Reddit caters to people who are bored, angry, and have a lot
| of free time. People don't spend hours complaining on Reddit
| when everything else is going great in their lives. The
| people commenting in that thread (before it hit the front
| page) had to actively seek out that topic and choose to
| subscribe to it. It's the opposite of random sampling.
|
| Reddit's front page is only an indicator of what active
| Redditors are thinking and saying, nothing more.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Folks forget just how big the Internet is. Thousands of
| people is _very far_ from a meaningfully representative group
| in nearly any national context, especially so in the US. And
| globally? Forget about it, thousands of people is just so
| small.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I married the first woman I dated in my (late) 20s; I was _not_
| having fun up to that point, and my 30s have been substantially
| better as a result.
|
| Sometimes, you just know. Having my family figured out is such
| a gigantic load off my mind, knowing someone's got my back for
| literally the rest of my life is _so much_ better than flitting
| around trying to meet new romantic partners, honestly I wonder
| if they interviewed people who were comfortable talking about
| their dating life, which means people like you and I get
| massively under-represented.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| FWIW my early 40s were a golden age in my marriage - basically
| once the kids got old enough to reliably sleep through the night.
| agent008t wrote:
| Why did it get worse after? Was it really not better in the
| first few years, before children?
| circlefavshape wrote:
| Menopause, and no
|
| edit: Actually "menopause" is being a bit glib. Things change
| in relationships, and often it's very difficult to understand
| why.
| xorfish wrote:
| What can be done if are on your 20s or early 30s to reduce or
| even avoid the dip in satisfaction at age 40 or ~10 years into a
| relationship?
|
| My personal belief is that freeing up some time for your future
| self may help with that.
|
| For me that means I want a career where you can reduce to a 24
| hour or less work per week. Now I work more to save and invest
| money to give my future self more options in how to balance
| children, work, friendships, sleep and hobbies without having to
| worry much about finances.
| 62951413 wrote:
| There's no coherent grand strategy. The world is structurally
| hostile to families and men and it's getting worse. It was hard
| enough in previous generations because men and women are in an
| adversarial relationship courtesy of mother nature. Nowadays on
| top of it many governments are destroying what little was left
| of a traditional society. It may not make a lot of sense to
| young people. You'll see what I mean once you are on the other
| side of 40.
|
| There are a few contradictory data points to keep in mind.
|
| * at age 40 a "dip in satisfaction" won't be your most pressing
| concern
|
| * marriage can be justified only by raising children
|
| * after 40 your life is literally meaningless if you have no
| children
|
| * a woman will want a child; those in their twenties who are
| lukewarm about it will be desperate by mid-30s
|
| * once a woman gets a child you will be a very distant priority
| for her
|
| * taking care of a child is a nearly full time job; earning
| enough to let your woman do it is a luxury only a few
| occupations such as programming can afford
|
| * a child is not guaranteed to share your interests/aspirations
| or even have a similar psychological profile; it could be a
| girl
|
| * a married man has no legal protection whatsoever and all the
| incentives are in place for women to take advantage of you. How
| decent you are or productive as a member of the society makes
| no difference. From what I have seen the correlation is
| negative - good men are hit the hardest.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| Nevermind that dip. The bigger problem is if your relationship
| ends up unhappy or broken and never rebounds. The solution to
| that seems to be to develop some kind of codependent loving
| emotional connection. Codependency sounds scary because it's
| also a source of severe unhappiness and abuse but when it's
| loving instead of toxic, it's supposed to be the best thing
| ever.
| mrits wrote:
| In college I was surrounded by female friends that shared the
| same interests as myself. However, the only thing I really
| cared about was attractiveness. I'm not sure when this switched
| for me exactly but I'm happy it did.
| colanderman wrote:
| I initially wanted to say, "don't have kids", but I actually
| don't see that as a huge correlate in my friends group. People
| I know without kids (myself included) have suffered from
| listlessness and lack of sense of purpose in their 30s, which
| leads to unhappiness.
|
| I think the bigger correlate is -- make sure you are with the
| right person, persons, or no-one, who are capable and willing
| to be open, trusting, honest, communicative, and constructive,
| and who have a healthy balance of selflessness and selfishness.
| People change, and relationships must change to weather those
| changes (or not) -- and that can only happen if you and your
| partner(s) can recognize and communicate those changes far
| ahead of time -- and work to adapt or move on from the
| relationship as appropriate.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Communicate. Men tend to overweigh financial stability as a
| relationship factor.
|
| When my wife and I met, my roommates were eating by shoplifting
| slimjims from across the street.
|
| We're more prosperous these days, but the guys I'm around
| complaining about their wives mostly consciously or
| unconsciously avoid them. You may not be having circus sex as a
| couple in your 50s, but some folks slow down on talking too,
| and that's how marriages fail.
| alostpuppy wrote:
| Oof. I feel that.
| telesilla wrote:
| Be honest with yourself and your partner. Get therapy. People
| can be happy or miserable regardless of the situation.
| derbOac wrote:
| Find the right partner, but recognize no partner will be
| perfect as such. Be grateful for them, communicate, be honest
| with yourself and them.
|
| A lot of people are saying this trend is about kids, and it
| might be. But at least in my experience there's maybe something
| else too, something about the internal relationship dynamics of
| trust and expectation. Early on I think there's a lot in a
| relationship based on expectations, and a certain distrust or
| something, even if you aren't aware of it. As the relationship
| continues, your expectations are not met in some ways, which
| interacts with distrust to cause issues. But then at some point
| those trust issues resolve, and you learn your positive
| expectations weren't too far off the mark either.
|
| Every relationship is different. I'm not sure how you could
| prepare except to be patient, open, and empathetic.
| brimble wrote:
| > For me that means I want a career where you can reduce to a
| 24 hour or less work per week. Now I work more to save and
| invest money to give my future self more options in how to
| balance children, work, friendships, sleep and hobbies without
| having to worry much about finances.
|
| _Blink. Blink._
|
| Yes, being rich is, famously, a great way to free up time and
| mental energy for other things, sure.
| bitexploder wrote:
| Be wealthy. Don't have kids. One of the biggest quality of life
| hits based on other research I have read is having kids and not
| having enough money. Or just choose your partner well.
| Relationship satisfaction is relative anyhow. So even if it
| dips you can still be objectively happy.
| Qem wrote:
| *Be wealthy. Don't have kids. Die young.
| reboog711 wrote:
| Also, I'd add "Be Healthy"...
|
| While there are some things you can do in your 20s to help
| you be healthy in your 40s; genetics can be a factor and
| cause serious issues.
| gmadsen wrote:
| I really think studies like that should be taken with a grain
| of salt. Polling people's current rate of life satisfaction
| while they are sleep deprived and changing diapers is very
| different than being 90 years old in a nursing home with no
| children or grandchildren
| qgin wrote:
| Nursing homes aren't full of childless people.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Correct. Those folks are long dead.
|
| Assuming you're over 65, you have up to 120 days of
| Medicare and however long it takes to liquidate your
| assets. From there you're a Medicaid ward, and without
| advocates, particularly as a male, you're not a profit
| center and won't last too long.
| Qem wrote:
| Supposing you were lucky to have a mild enough problem to
| seek a hospital in first place. Older people living alone
| are at risk of a quickly incapacitating heart attack or
| stroke, with nobody to perceive it and call help.
| qgin wrote:
| Most people don't make it a year regardless. Once you're
| in bad enough shape to need a nursing home, it's rare for
| anyone to last long. Being sick enough to not be able to
| handle activities of daily living has a worse prognosis
| than pretty much any disease.
| bitexploder wrote:
| Sure, I tend to agree. Overall life satisfaction (e: in the
| long term) is higher for people with kids according to
| other studies, heh. So I think other studies confirm that
| notion. Social science studies probably don't replicate
| well anyhow. But some do and it often reflects general
| wisdom as you pointed out. There is rarely a simple answer.
| Just live life and be present as a habit is my motto.
| bennysomething wrote:
| I'd really like to know if overall if people are happier
| with or without kids. I know a few dad's who have said if
| they had the choice now they'd say no. But long term I'm
| not sure.
|
| My only regret as a parent is how badly I wasted my time
| before becoming a parent. So much free time wasted.
|
| Another question I'd like to know the answer to: is having
| more than one child better for the whole family?
| as_bntd wrote:
| Anecdotally, as a sibling (eldest) I can tell you that my
| life is improved immensely by having siblings, and they'd
| say the same.
| jethro_tell wrote:
| On More kids, anecdotally, it really does help.
| Especially in pandemic time.
|
| The extra effort after one is pretty much a wash, but I
| see so many parents that spend so much time entertaining,
| and hanging with their kid. There's nothing wrong with
| that but it's not at all how we were raised.
|
| I think there's something really beneficial to just going
| out into the world with someone who knows about as much
| as you and exploring. No one standing there telling you
| the answer or why right away.
|
| You can play with your kid, but you'll never be let's get
| sticks and play pretend Zelda for 2 hours focused like
| two kids might.
|
| Mine craft buddies? For sure.
|
| Rainy day monopoly? Definitely.
|
| Homework help? They do that too though sometimes need an
| adult. Nthe little one is really good at math and the
| older is a better reader/speller.
|
| When we go to dinner, my wife and I can sit across from
| each other and enjoy a conversation and our kids usually
| talk/play games/do art together.
|
| The amount of time they spend together takes a burden off
| of being a parent that I see my friends and other parents
| carry.
|
| They are more like roommates to us than massive chores
| because we have time to do other things in life without
| feeling guilty because there is a board child that need
| socialization and attention.
|
| They are kids, they need adult help and input but they
| don't need to be entertained every minute of the day.
|
| I also am willing to factor that being able to afford 2
| children in the city may hint at other problems we don't
| have. I recognize that's generally quite the privledged
| place to be and don't take it for granted.
| bitexploder wrote:
| In the 20 years or so you are raising kids, probably less
| happy. In the 20 years after they are adults probably
| more happy. It really depends on a lot. The thing about
| all of these social science studies is they can only
| measure broadly. They are very hard to use as an
| individual to make good choices because there are so many
| factors. I know parents who absolutely love it and it
| brings them a lot of joy, even with young kids. I know
| other parents who really did not enjoy certain phases of
| their kids development. My wife and I are somewhere in
| the middle. Teenagers are challenging, but alright if you
| did a good job in the years before they became teenagers
| most of the time. If you ask someone deep in a tough
| moment of raising children of course they will be more
| likely to say no. Ask them when their kids have graduated
| college or moved onto to the career phase of their life
| and see what their answer is :]
| jethro_tell wrote:
| I think realistic expectations are key. You're not going to be
| in love allnthe time. That's an emotional high that yoy cant
| reproduce all the time, in the mean time, you can be patient,
| and understanding and empathetic.
|
| You cant feel it allnthe time, but you can work to care for
| your partner regardless. they wont feel it all the time, but
| you can be patient and keep showing them love.
|
| Being good to someone when they don't deserve it shows a lot
| more love then being all over them when you are feeling it.
|
| carve out time for selfcare. bith for yourself and your
| partner. When someone snaps, don't respond with, 'why are you
| such a bitch?' (spoken or thought) instead try, 'You sound
| stressed, go take a bath and get your nails done' or 'why don't
| you take the afternoon off and I'll handle things around here's
|
| If you do that when they don't deserve it, it's gonna go a long
| way.
|
| Invest in yourself as well, really strive to understand who you
| are, what you like, and why you do what you do. That can help
| with those times when your partner triggers a strong negative
| feeling but you don't quite know what or why. Of course you'd
| love it if they never did that again but if you don't
| understand the why, a different but similar action could have
| the same effect and resentment starts to build.
|
| To be honest though I wonder how much is luck? My wife and I
| have pretty open communication and have gotten to where we
| aren't easily offended by each other which makes undesirable
| behavior bearable and then the good times are a delight. Not
| all relationships have that.
| dpweb wrote:
| The relationship has to come first. It precedes the marriage and
| family, and I think societal norms are to put the children and
| the piece of paper first.
|
| It's a living thing that needs to be fed, and when times get
| tough what do people often do. Stop being kind to each other,
| stop having sex, building resentment and accelerating the
| decline.
|
| The goal is not to keep it together at all costs. The goal is to
| live an authentic life, and if that is going to be with a
| partner, don't lose sight of that fact it's the two of you that's
| important, not all the other stuff that comes along.
| chmod600 wrote:
| Mostly agree, but I think using the word "priority" here is
| unhelpful. Priorities allow you to decide what to do _right
| now_ , and even for that case, they are often misused.
|
| I think what you really mean is that you shouldn't repeatedly
| neglect the relationship in favor of other time investments,
| including kids. Or, perhaps you mean that most people under-
| invest their time in their relationship and over-invest their
| time in kids.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Once kids enter the picture, they they are _the_ priority. Not
| giving up the "authentic life" to give your children the "best
| life" is pure selfishness. Once you have kids, your life is no
| longer your own...it's theirs. It's been proven myriad ways
| that kids are better off with both parents for many
| developmental reasons. I'm not against divorce, but it should
| be an insurmountable rift that leads there.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| On airplanes, there is a reason you put your oxygen mask on
| first before your child's: If you neglect taking care of
| yourself, your child will suffer, too.
| ummonk wrote:
| The best thing you can do for your kids is to have a good
| happy relationship with your partner.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I think the idea is that if you DO nurture and feed your
| relationship, you're more likely to have the kind of
| environment where there is love and compassion, and that is
| an infinitely better situation for the kids than one where
| the parents hate each other and are resentful.
|
| > It's been proven myriad ways that kids are better off with
| both parents for many developmental reasons.
|
| Is that true? I know that it's been shown that kids in 2
| parent households do better than single parent ones, but I
| don't know that research has separated out the "correlation
| vs. causation" aspect of that. I.e. would it be better for
| the kids 2 parents that hate each other to stick together
| rather than separate.
| watwut wrote:
| You gotta normalize for incarceration, abuse, narcissism,
| neglect, financial issues, sicknesses, mental health
| issues. All those are way more likely to either prevent
| marriage or end in divorce. Many of those are repeating
| patterns in parents life's even after divorce.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > " correlation vs. causation"
|
| Such a study would not have any importance to me. One
| family that is stricken with physically abusive or
| alcoholic parents combined with another family that does
| not have those issues. How can you say the kids in the
| first family are better off without divorce compared to
| then second family?
| acchow wrote:
| > Not giving up the "authentic life" to give your children
| the "best life" is pure selfishness
|
| What do you think the "authentic life" is, and what do you
| think giving it up means, and why does that benefit the
| children?
| brimble wrote:
| Kids can _always_ take more. There 's _always_ something you
| could be doing to help them, to improve their future
| prospects, to make them better-adjusted, give them better
| nutrition, give them some help with making friends or
| maintaining relationships, et c.
|
| It's absolutely necessary to say "no" to that stuff _pretty
| often_. They can be "the priority" as long as that allows
| that a good deal of the time they actually won't be.
|
| It's also not the case that one must only make that trade-off
| when there's some Greater Good in it for the kid(s). You
| don't give up your life because you have kids. The notion
| that you should is very modern and is still _not_ typical in
| a ton of (non-US) cultures.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| It feels like my 4yo is more at ease with himself and us
| when I am taking care of myself. This is highly difficult
| to assess objectively but kids are extremely good at
| picking up and emotionally inheriting the ambient levels of
| stress and discomfort.
| lrvick wrote:
| Kids look for role models that have their own dreams,
| hobbies, ambitions... complete people.
|
| Parents that give up their own lives to obsess over their
| children are often not the people a child will choose as role
| models, because they are boring. Kids need to see parents
| continually trying new things of their own choosing. They
| need to see them failing, and sometimes succeeding, at
| pursuing their own goals.
|
| Most kids would be happier with a happy parent living their
| own authentic life and living in a trailer, than a parent
| trying too hard to provide for a "nice" home and a "good"
| school that a kid never asked for.
| watwut wrote:
| Statistically, kids growing up in trailers don't do better
| then kids in nice homes. The stress of such arrangement
| itself, the financial insecurity is affecting both kids and
| parents.
|
| And also, imo, kids of parents who obsessed over kids
| pretty often end up obsessing over own kids. Parenting is
| one of those things qe tend to copy a lot.
|
| People who obsessed over kids or particular hobby or work
| are not incomplete. They are whole humans, just that you
| disaproves their values and choices. Or don't understand
| their psychology. Even if they are unhappy in their own
| arrangement, they are still whole people.
| dijit wrote:
| Grew up poor, doing well financially now.
|
| It's true that poverty is self fulfilling but economic
| success isn't everything either.
|
| You can be poor and happy (and good).
|
| You can be wealthy and miserable (and immoral).
|
| I'm not saying stress is good or that people should have
| to struggle, but you make it sound as if misery is a
| foregone conclusion for those raised in lower socio-
| economic conditions.
| NhanH wrote:
| Prioritize the relationship with your partner (living the
| "authentic life", as the GP puts it) is how you keep the
| happy family together to benefit the kid the most. The
| alternative leads to either insurmountable rift or parents
| yelling at each other, which might be just barely better than
| divorce.
|
| If you leave your new born at home to join a swing sex party,
| you're a bad parent. But if you can only have sex with your
| partner once a year in the first 10 years of your child, it
| should be considered just as bad, and society tends to ignore
| the latter case much more.
|
| Turn out it's the balancing act that would be difficult, and
| there is probably no one-liner to explain it all huh? Who
| could have known.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| Other societies, the kids are not first. The parents are,
| because they work to support and feed the kids.
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| This assumes those two goals are in opposition to each other.
| gexla wrote:
| If you want to keep a family together, the relationship must
| come first. Or, order it however you want, the relationship
| must be attended to with the hard work which it requires.
| Imagine raising children in a relationship in which there's
| no sex and the parents are only together out of a sense of
| duty. How will that affect their own sense of how a
| relationship should work? Marriage doesn't fix this.
|
| The relationship may even be harder than raising the
| children.
| grvdrm wrote:
| I think this phrasing is bad. It's not about what's first
| or second or any other order. It's about balance.
|
| You should prioritize your relationship regularly (e.g.
| every other week date night). You should prioritize talking
| to and educating your kids as much as possible. And as
| someone else mentioned, you're allowed to spend time with
| yourself, doing whatever productive or unproductive thing
| you want to do.
|
| But balance is key. And more importantly, communication.
| All of this breaks down when two people don't talk to each
| other. Talking is the hardest part because it can feel
| useful, or useless, or downright infuriating, and etc. Yet,
| anecdotally, two people in a relationship that actively
| work to talk to each other are going to enjoy their
| relationship (more) and probably do a better job raising
| kids. They'll also more quickly conclude that they
| shouldn't be together if it comes to that - something that
| is easy to overlook.
| gexla wrote:
| Right, communication is huge. From one of my other
| comments.
|
| > If you want an eye-opening account of how relationships
| go bad, take a stroll over to /r/deadbedrooms in Reddit.
| It doesn't matter if you're 20 or 50, you may see the
| same patterns in your own relationship.
|
| They cover everything you need to know there, probably
| much better than anyone here will explain it.
| zwkrt wrote:
| I'm sure I'm not the only one that was raised in such an
| environment. I spent most of my 20s really strongly
| convinced that I should stay in relationships that were not
| healthy and just "slog it out" because that's what I had as
| a template. Somehow the maintenance of the relationship
| takes priority over the fulfillment of either person, like
| a failed business contract where both parties are losing
| money but feel contractually obligated to continue.
|
| I might go even one step further though and say that your
| first priority has to be to yourself. Of course if you have
| children you have to take care of them at whatever cost,
| but if you aren't taking care of yourself you'll never be
| able to take care of them. And if you're never true to
| yourself then you won't be able to make an authentic
| relationship. Really the entire nuclear family requires
| such a high level of emotional intelligence that I'm
| surprised it works out as often as it does.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I'm a parent in such a relationship. The reason people
| take "vows" (the strongest sort of promise you can make)
| in marriage is so that they stay together and take care
| of their children. My wife and I are not divorced, we are
| both involved parents, and remain friends, but we have
| not had an intimate relationship in about 15 years. Yes I
| have had my doubts about whether this was the best
| example to provide to my children but it seems better
| than any alternative, given the circumstances. In any
| event, the children are all grown now, so it is what it
| is.
| gexla wrote:
| I wrote this in another comment.
|
| > As I get older, I feel that I have become much more
| self-aware of problems which appear in my life. While
| before, they may have been a black-box I push aside, now
| they are a curiosity I feel compelled to explore.
|
| You somehow have to be aware of problems in your life and
| willing to explore them. Otherwise you stick to your
| defaults and deal with them with that severely limited
| tooling which your life path has handed down to you.
|
| One small nit pick, I believe emotional intelligence was
| one of the subjects of the replication crisis. Or maybe
| it didn't even get that far. It seemed to become a thing
| by a journalist writing a best selling book off work by
| psychologists who ultimately decided it might actually
| not be a thing and moved on. I haven't checked the
| current state in years, but it looked like a dead end,
| last I checked.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > Imagine raising children in a relationship in which
| there's no sex and the parents are only together out of a
| sense of duty.
|
| This is the second time I've seen sex mentioned as one of
| the primary components of a relationship--and I think it
| can be, but the idea that that's the only way to have a
| loving relationship is wrong. Imagine raising children in a
| relationship without love? That's horrifying. Imagine
| raising children a relationship without sex? Well, sure,
| why not?
| ummonk wrote:
| Sex is an integral part (though not the only one) of most
| romantic relationships. If it weren't, most people
| wouldn't be demanding sexual exclusivity from their
| partners.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Not having sex is fine if that's OK with you. It isn't
| the only way to a loving relationship. It is shortsighted
| to think it isn't an important part of one, though, and
| I'm personally not going to be in another sexless
| relationship unless it is open to me finding sex outside
| of the relationship. Otherwise, I'm not staying because
| that relationship doesn't meet my needs and I'm unhappy.
|
| I can't imagine raising children, honestly, but I
| especially cannot imagine it while also being extremely
| unsatisfied in a relationship. Children deserve content
| parents, if possible.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Once kids enter the picture, they they are the priority.
| Not giving up the "authentic life" to give your children the
| "best life" is pure selfishness. Once you have kids, your
| life is no longer your own...it's theirs.
|
| This mentality is not only wrong, it's extremely unhealthy.
| Your personal life doesn't end when you become a parent.
| Parents shouldn't let their children's lives become the all-
| consuming center of your universe to the exclusion of all
| things self.
|
| This mindset is actually extremely unhealthy for both the
| parents and the children. It's true that you need to provide
| attention and love and care to children, but you also need to
| grant them some space and autonomy as they grow older.
|
| Take care of your kids, yes, but take care of yourself too.
| Everything in life is about balance and moderation. Go too
| far in any one direction to the neglect of other important
| things and you're only going to create problems for yourself,
| no matter how well-intentioned you thought you were.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I don't think any of what you are saying is at odds with
| GP's comment.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| Putting your kids first doesn't mean you can't take care of
| yourself. You are implying that, but no one else is.
|
| Of course children need a happy and healthy parent to care
| for them, so your needs are still included in the mix, in
| case you were worried about that.
| dijit wrote:
| The parent of the comment you're replying to directly
| states that children come first, the topic is marriage
| and being in a loving relationship.
|
| I have seen a handful of psychologists which claim that
| happiness of the parents is quite important to happiness
| of the children, and throwing yourself on the altar of
| self-sacrifice could be causing more harm than you think.
|
| If taking care of yourself means not being in a
| relationship with someone, but you have children, what's
| the priority? That's always going to be a hard question.
|
| Your first sentence is far too dismissive of that. These
| things are diametrically opposed if they parent of the
| comment you're replying to is to be believed.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| You can't take care of your kids well if you don't take
| care of yourself. That being said, if there is only enough
| for one of you to eat... well, the kid eats first and you
| get leftovers. Taking care of yourself has to work around
| the child's needs as well, especially when they are young
| and simply cannot do for themselves.
| watwut wrote:
| There is no way for both parents to be "authentic self"
| while the kid is small. Whether it is one of them working
| many hours a day whole the other says home or whether it is
| both juggling work and parenting.Something gotta give. The
| time you was being "authentic self", whatever it means, is
| the time that is now spent supervising toddler.
|
| Sometimes one of partners remains authentic self and keeps
| all those self things. And it looks cool until you realize
| their partner is not getting any "me time" at all or help.
| And that setup is significantly less cool for partner.
| MrJohz wrote:
| Sure, but balancing the needs of multiple people is what
| a relationship is all about, and the idea that you give
| up on that entirely to focus solely on your children
| what's being criticised here. Yes, your children will
| have needs, and yes, you will need to sacrifice some
| things to help your children, but that doesn't mean that
| "your life is no longer your own", any more than the
| sacrifices you make to form a relationship with a
| partner.
|
| To be charitable, I think the original post was more
| making an argument against complete individualism, and I
| broadly agree with that in principle: if you live in a
| community, you will have to deal with compromises between
| what you want and what other people want. But it's
| dangerous to push things too far the other way: if you
| are making all the compromises, and getting nothing that
| you want, then there is something unhealthy about that
| relationship. Obviously that plays out differently for
| relationships between adults, and relationships between
| parents and their children - you can't sit down with a
| baby and set clear boundaries! But making time for
| yourself, and organising things so your needs are met is
| still important.
| qgin wrote:
| I'm having a hard time squaring these high (70+) satisfaction
| rates with what I've seen in the long-term relationships of
| people I've known well enough to know if they were happy or not.
| It's always seemed to me that the happy ones were a fortunate
| minority.
|
| Maybe I'm wrong and I've just lived in a bubble of unhappy
| people? Maybe a study measuring "satisfaction" is actually
| capturing something other than happiness?
| francisofascii wrote:
| I think those couples who are always in a satisfied state are a
| minority. As the article mentions, most relationships have ups
| and downs between satisfied and unsatisfied. So many with the
| people you know, you only are hearing about the unsatisfied
| times. So when I see those rates, I think is is those couples
| are in a "satisfied" zone 70% of the time.
| qgin wrote:
| That could be it. Also I think maybe "satisfied" is way of
| saying "I think this is worth it". People continue on in bad
| situations all the time because they think -- all things
| considered -- it's worth it compared to the alternatives they
| imagine.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| I see a mix of elderly people who are very happy and people who
| are bitter and actively do not want to hear any good news about
| the world because they would rather be mad. And America right
| now really has a lot of sophisticated people working hard to
| take advantage of the latter, amplifying it and making it
| worse. It makes me really sad and angry, and I think about
| strategies to avoid it happening to me as I get older. Anyone
| got good ideas?
| draw_down wrote:
| toyg wrote:
| Some people might appear unhappy when actually they are just
| comfortably set in an adversarial dynamic. Two of my
| grandparents would often seem to be arguing with raised voices
| when in public, being serious all the time, with all the
| classic corollary of old-school wife/husband remarks, but
| behind the scenes they were an absolute unit - they never had
| any affairs (unlike their own parents...), and after he passed
| away she immediately fell into a long depression, barely a year
| later she was gone too. They would rarely admit to others that
| they were happy, but in an anonymized "only God can see you"
| survey, they would have probably been honest enough to tick the
| very-happy boxes.
| watwut wrote:
| > they never had any affairs (unlike their own parents...),
| and after he passed away she immediately fell into a long
| depression, barely a year later she was gone too
|
| To be honest, that is rather low bar for happy relationship.
| It think that maybe you should believe more what they said
| about their own happiness then project happiness onto them
| when no one is looking.
| toyg wrote:
| I think maybe you should refrain from passing judgement on
| people you've never even met.
|
| The fucking internet, man, sometimes...
| watwut wrote:
| I did not said a single negative thing about them. Saying
| that maybe they were not secretly happy, but instead they
| felt like they said they feel or how they looked is not a
| judgement.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Thanks for posting this. I'm 40, and I met my wife 10 years ago.
|
| I suspect the valley in the graph has to do with lack of sleep
| from getting children to school.
| gexla wrote:
| The trouble with a study like this is that there are loads of in
| the trench details which don't go into it. I don't write studies,
| but I see a generalization which buries a lot of important
| details. This is a complex subject.
|
| If you want an eye-opening account of how relationships go bad,
| take a stroll over to /r/deadbedrooms in Reddit. It doesn't
| matter if you're 20 or 50, you may see the same patterns in your
| own relationship.
|
| As I get older, I feel that I have become much more self-aware of
| problems which appear in my life. While before, they may have
| been a black-box I push aside, now they are a curiosity I feel
| compelled to explore.
| rcpt wrote:
| Reminder that over half of psychology studies fail
| reproducibility test
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18248
|
| https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2016/03/03/more-on-re...
|
| I'm not an expert in psychology but something about that research
| just feels off. Seems like a real hard thing to quantify and
| detailed year over year results like they're presenting should be
| hard to get.
| MarcScott wrote:
| There's also a financial aspect that I think is important, and
| this is purely anecdotal, based on my experience.
|
| When my partner and I were younger we had more dependent
| children, were not yet established in our careers, and were
| living month to month, with little to show for it. Money was a
| frequent cause of arguments and resentment.
|
| Now we are down to one dependent child, we are both earning good
| money, can afford to splash out on each other a little, take an
| occasional holiday, and don't feel bad about the odd selfish
| purchase. We don't argue about money anymore. Nothing much else
| has changed, our love life has remained consistent, time
| together, shared activities. The one major change is that we're
| not fretting at the end of the month, as we wait for payday.
| watwut wrote:
| I think this is going to be common experience.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| One thing I find interesting is that my wife and I explicitly
| discussed before marriage that we would not have kids until
| and if we had enough to ensure the kids would have a nice,
| stable home with decent healthcare and education.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| Probably someone already told you this could be a trap. You
| might never arrive to the point when you feel everything is
| really perfect to have kids. In my case, I expressed is as
| the amount of cash I need to have in order to feel secure
| enough - a concrete amount is much more reachable as an
| aim.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I model our cash flow for the rest of our lives to
| determine when and if we have enough for our goals, and
| if we need to modify goals. I would say the
| house/mortgage payment is the big one, and then the
| roughly $15k to $20k per year per kid for daycare, and
| then a few thousand per year for doctors. And then a few
| years of expenses saved up in case we lost our incomes. I
| think it was in the $200k range (excluding house) or so.
|
| Both my wife and I grew up children of poor immigrants.
| Neither of us had our own home, much less a room, and we
| moved around quite a bit, and we did not see a dentist
| until we both had gotten jobs in our 20s that afforded us
| dental benefits. I had been in 8 different schools in 7
| states by the time I was in 9th grade, and I think we
| both agreed that financial insecurity was our biggest
| problem growing up. If we did not have that for our kids,
| then we were simply happy to go without kids.
| Artistry121 wrote:
| So in essence the way you were raised convinced you you'd
| rather someone not exist rather than have that childhood?
|
| Is that because of what it did to you and your life or
| because of the stress on your parents?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Yes, I would not want another person to have the
| childhood I did (although I understand that many, many
| people around the world have much worse childhoods,
| including my parents). It did put stress on my parents,
| of course, but my main motivation is in the interests of
| the child(ren). Which I guess is also to not have
| stressed out parents.
|
| I also think I was lucky to have had the life trajectory
| I did, partly due to just being good at school. My
| parents never taught me English (and we still do not
| speak English to each other), but I somehow never had a
| problem being successful in US schools. I doubt that is
| the case for many other kids in similar positions.
|
| I was also lucky that I had access to online forums and
| educated adults to advise me on what choices to make,
| since my parents were not able to help me. I do not think
| I would have had a fraction of the success were it not
| for the internet giving me the ability to communicate
| with educated people familiar with how things work in the
| US.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| > So in essence the way you were raised convinced you
| you'd rather someone not exist rather than have that
| childhood?
|
| Well, that is really a metaphysical question. If there
| was a way of knowing whether consciousness exists before
| conception and if so, what is its "quality of life", it
| would shed a new light on our perspective of not just
| when, but also whether to have kids and how many.
| Loughla wrote:
| This is absolutely the best way. My partner and I set our
| goal at X% of our total annual expenses in savings
| exclusively, before we started trying for children
|
| A nebulous 'when we're comfortable' will never be
| comfortable. Whereas a set, concrete goal based on income
| and expenses is measurable and provides a clear path to
| an outcome.
| nuclearnice3 wrote:
| What's X, approximately? As a frame, I think 25 times
| annual expenses is a retirement goal.
| Loughla wrote:
| Not X times, but X% of. For us, that was 90-100% of
| annual expenses. We wanted a one year cushion in case
| something went wrong.
|
| And to be clear - that's cash money, not investments.
| That is simply a crash easy to access liquid asset in
| case of emergency. If we couldn't say, this cash is
| exclusively for this goal, we didn't count it.
|
| It took 6 years to put together, with both of us working
| in education.
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah, I'm with you and we're also doing this.
|
| Reality though (imo) is this is extraordinarily rare and
| most people pick mates based on attractiveness at a young
| age and then have kids similarly randomly either then or a
| couple of years later at best.
|
| Any kind of planning around this (or anything really) seems
| to be uncommon.
| watwut wrote:
| Most people dont have kids randomly.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Based on the stats of increasing age at first marriage,
| increasing age at first child's birth, and overall
| decreasing birth and marriage rates, I assume more and
| more people are doing the same calculations and
| concluding that if they cannot have a certain minimum
| lifestyle, then they are willing to forego the
| marriage/child parts of life.
| subpixel wrote:
| As Mike Tyson said so eloquently, everyone has a plan until
| they get punched in the mouth.
|
| That reflects my experience in planning for vs actually
| creating a family.
| ant6n wrote:
| In retrospect, I should've had kids when I was in grad
| school. I wasnt ricb then, but had more time and more
| energy. Then they'd be mostly out of the house once I get
| settled. But that's a Canadian/German perspective, where
| there's access to health insurance and affordable day care,
| so kids aren't so expensive.
|
| Ppl worry too much about kids. They mostly ride along with
| whatever, and are probably more flexible than u are.
| doubled112 wrote:
| > Canadian perspective ... affordable day care
|
| Is $1000+ a month per child for daycare in large cities
| considered affordable?
| ant6n wrote:
| No. Its also not what u pay in Montreal.
| klyrs wrote:
| Sadly, that's a Quebec perspective. The rest of Canada
| has yet to get its shit together with respect to
| childcare.
| balfirevic wrote:
| In retrospect, I should have worked my ass off so that
| I'd be retired now. Or learned a bunch of languages. Or
| spend a lot of time practicing guitar and piano.
|
| In other words, it's easy to imagine what you should've
| done when you also imagine the entire cost being in the
| past but all the benefits still being enjoyed in the
| present. You might, of course, be right - but you also
| might not be, and it's hard to tell when fantasising
| about all the benefits and not actively living through
| paying the cost.
|
| Which is also the reason why we shouldn't put much stock
| in what people on their death beds say they wish they've
| done differently.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Which is very sad, because those two things should just be
| a given in a prosperous society.
|
| (I'm guessing you are in the USA.)
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Yes, I am in the US.
| jlokier wrote:
| Because of the housing cost crisis, I'd guess the majority
| of people currently of child-bearing age will simply miss
| the chance to have children at all if they put it off until
| they have a nice, _stable_ home with decent healthcare and
| education.
|
| They will not get that until their 40s or later, if ever,
| by which point the wife will have reached the end of their
| viable child-bearing years, probably with some panic and
| grief if they waited.
|
| Did your wife and you discuss before marriage whether you
| would skip having kids entirely if you didn't achieve your
| financial ambitions in time, or were you able to assume you
| would?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Yes, we made it clear to each other that we were both not
| interested in having kids if we could not provide them
| with the minimum quality of life/opportunities we wanted
| for the kids.
|
| I am also cognizant that maybe those discussions were all
| just talk, and biological urges from one or both of us
| would have won out if push came to shove and we were mid
| 30s and had not reached our minimum viability stage yet.
| watwut wrote:
| I think that the point was, your rules are not good
| population level rules.
|
| Also, on population level and looking at history, a lot
| of marginalized subgroups would cease to exists entirely
| if they followed those rules. Including formerly
| marginalized subgroups that do better now.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Keeping the population levels up is so far down in my
| list of priorities that it will never come up. Is this
| really a concern of other people?
| jlokier wrote:
| I think you've misunderstood the comment you're replying
| to, as I don't believe that comment is talking about
| keeping up the population.
|
| I think they are talking about what kind of decision
| making about kids is rational for most people across the
| majority of the population, as well as what kind of
| decision making is useful for sustaining the cultures we
| have.
|
| It would be a pretty big deal if most people decided to
| apply the "wait until we have a nice, stable home with
| decent healthcare and education" rule for having kids. In
| much of the developed world, it would be tantamount to
| deciding that only well-off people shall have kids, and
| the effect of that on human culture would be profound.
| xxpor wrote:
| But that's the point. Society has made raising kids
| extremely expensive. Society needs to fix itself if it
| wants to continue growing.
|
| And it's really not even that hard. We know what the
| issues are. It's entirely a political problem. (talking
| mostly about the Anglo world here).
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I am certainly no authority on what rules other people
| should have. But I also think history would have been
| very different if women had had the financial
| independence they do now, plus access to the birth
| control methods available these days.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| This exact question is why I am not a married man today.
| I promised myself that I wouldn't have children if I
| couldn't give them all the opportunities my parents gave
| me, she wanted to "just have faith" that we would be a
| happy family.
| ip26 wrote:
| Nobody even remembers being 0-6 years old. I have decided
| this is in part a sort of grace period for you, the parent,
| to get your shit together. For example, if you have a kid
| at 25, you've got at least until 30 to secure a stable
| environment for them. (You are also way more motivated to
| do this when the kid is there)
|
| Certainly on the other hand, it makes some things easier if
| you don't have to sweat the cost of a doctor visit, but
| it's hardly prerequisite.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| >Nobody even remembers being 0-6 years old.
|
| Maybe you don't have conscious memory of much of that
| time, but it _absolutely_ shapes the person you will
| become. If you haven 't, please check out the following
| books:
|
| The Body Keeps Score
|
| Behave
|
| What Happened to You
|
| Having said that, your psychological stability matters SO
| MUCH MORE than your financial stability. A parent who is
| kind, patient, caring, and struggling financially is
| going to have a much better outcome than a cold, distant
| parent that cannot control their anger, but can otherwise
| afford to provide their toddler's every whim.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| I agree in principle. But some claims stretch the truth.
| E.g. 'suppressed memories' from early childhood are often
| false?
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Memory isn't reliable for any of us, but this is
| especially true with childhood. I certainly would not
| have a 4 year old testify in a trial.
|
| My point was that events absolutely _do_ emotionally
| imprint from basically birth onward. There was a very
| unethical but interesting experiment that a pair of
| psychologists did on their toddler. They showed him a pet
| rabbit and made a loud noise to startle him. As an adult,
| the man was terrified of rabbits but had no idea why.
| Children exposed to violent parents as a child go on to
| have a host of issues even if they 're removed from that
| environment. It's flat out wrong to suggest that parents
| get a pass from birth to 6 because 'children don't
| remember'.
| ntlk wrote:
| Is that really true? I have memories from the age of
| about 3-3.5 onwards.
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| As do I. I credit my dad with this. From a very young age
| he would frequently ask me what my earliest memories
| were, and ask me to recount them in as much detail as I
| could remember.
|
| That really cemented in my memory a few key moments in my
| life from about age 2.5 onward (the birth of my younger
| sister, meeting some of my childhood best friends, etc)
| brimble wrote:
| Some retain memories from that age range, but it isn't
| the norm, sure. I definitely had strong memories from age
| 5 or 6 that lasted well into my teen years, which surely
| had an effect (they were mostly bad ones--I used to do
| some _terrible_ ruminating at night).
|
| Agree with he overall point that poorer material
| circumstances in the 0-5 age range likely has little
| effect, provided it's not to the point that basic things
| like good nutrition become a problem.
|
| > Certainly on the other hand, it makes some things
| easier if you don't have to sweat the cost of a doctor
| visit, but it's hardly prerequisite.
|
| Child care and healthcare costs in the US pretty much
| ensure that anyone with young kids who doesn't have a
| household income well over $100,000 is gonna feel like
| they're struggling. There's so-poor-you're-getting-quite-
| a-bit-of-assistance, which obviously feels like
| struggling (because it is), and then there's a big window
| of diminishing assistance in which those two things
| (especially) tend to eat all your extra income, before
| you _finally_ hit a point at which it feels possible to
| keep your head above water without cutting expenses to
| the bone. It 's easy to spend north of $30,000 on those
| two things per year, if you've got a couple kids and
| don't have absolute top-tier employer-provided health
| benefits (very few have that, and they tend to have huge
| salaries on top of it), and that's without splurging for,
| say, some super-fancy day care/school. And that's if no-
| one in your household has _any_ health problems that
| year! And without costs for diapers, or clothes (very
| cheap, mostly, just buy used and in bulk), or food, or
| anything else. The only way to significantly diminish
| those costs is to have family that can take over most or
| all of what would otherwise be paid childcare, or to have
| one parent stay home, which usually only makes
| (financial) sense if you have _lots of_ kids and the
| parent staying home had fairly low earning potential.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Young kids are not expensive, and they don't care much
| about having a lavish home. IMO you want to have kids by no
| later than your mid 30s. You don't want to be 60 and
| dealing with teenagers.
| jvvw wrote:
| I actually think that when they are young is the most
| expensive period - unless you have family nearby to help,
| either one of you gives up work or you pay a large amount
| of money on childcare, or some combination thereof if you
| work part-time. Although we haven't reached the teenage
| years yet so I am prepared to change my mind!
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It depends if you want them to go to daycare or not and
| what kind of quality of life tradeoffs you are willing to
| make.
|
| If you do, then they are going to bring back sicknesses
| every other week for a couple years, which means lost
| work time / $150 to $250 for the ones that require doctor
| visits.
|
| Pregnancy and birth alone will prob take most families to
| the out of pocket maximum, anywhere from $3k if your
| employer is generous to $17k per year (legal maximum) if
| it is the cheapest insurance.
|
| I assume licensed, inspected daycare in even the cheapest
| COL areas is $10k per year. But this is where
| grandparents who are willing to serve as backup or
| guardians while you work can make a world of difference.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Can strongly relate to both parts of this. Particularly a
| source of conflict when partners have different family of
| origin experiences-- the one whose parents normalized buying a
| round of drive thru coffees every Sunday on the way to church
| is going to really struggle to ever be frugal enough for the
| one who grew up eating out once or twice a year and never
| having take-out. "Cheaper" families can often end up developing
| an attitude that buying a solution to a problem instead of
| reusing or making do with what you have is a cop-out or sign of
| being bougie; it's important to be able to shed those things
| (with the help of a therapist, if necessary) rather than
| bringing them into a relationship where they erode trust and
| safety. On the other side of things, a lot of upper middle
| class families think of themselves as "not rich" so that can be
| an adjustment to look back and recognize that oh yeah... I kind
| of was well-off wasn't I, and part of the privilege of
| wealth/class is actually being shielded from the full reality
| of it and just thinking of whatever your experience was as
| being normal.
|
| Anyway, one of the keys I think is explicitly acknowledging the
| transitions to different tiers of financial security as they
| happen. Otherwise a lot of that early stress/judgment/anxiety
| can hold over from the early years until long past the point
| where any of it really matters any more. A few $5 treats a week
| is a way bigger deal when the household income is $50k than
| when it's $150k.
| darkerside wrote:
| Like they say of sports teams undergoing periods of poor
| chemistry, "winning solves everything."
| slim wrote:
| you have to be a team for that to work
| darkerside wrote:
| Do you not think a married couple is a team?
| watwut wrote:
| It does not. Sometimes the issue is real. Winning don't make
| it disappear. The good feeling after makes it easier to not
| solve it until it gets real bad.
| darkerside wrote:
| Sure, it's sometimes real. It's just a saying. But there is
| definitely a real aspect to it where the stress of constant
| losing will wear on even the strongest team over time. It's
| amazing how quickly the sense can go from thinking the team
| needs to be blown up to thinking it's on track to contend
| at the highest level.
| [deleted]
| nkotov wrote:
| I'm approaching my fifth year of marriage and we have two kids
| under 3. My wife is a stay-at-home mom for the time being. I am
| pretty satisfied in my marriage even though right now, it feels
| it's one of the most hardest because the kids demand so much
| attention and a huge portion of our life is surrounded around
| them. To me, it seems like my wife just found another gear and is
| now hustling at another level with the kids. I stand in awe in
| how much she handles them while also putting up with me and my
| work (running a startup and all the emotional baggage that comes
| with it).
|
| One thing that worked for us is establishing clear communication
| and guidelines. For example when I'm in my home-office and door
| is closed - it's do not disturb mode. Once I'm done with work, I
| take over and watch the kids while my wife rests for a bit and
| then it's bedtime for the kids - each of us takes a kid and put
| them to sleep. By 8:00 PM, both kids are asleep and its time for
| ourselves. We either spend it together (watching TV, etc) or
| apart (I play CoD, she relaxes by reading or watching her shows).
| We also have a mandatory at least one date a month away from the
| kids. This lets us to continue dating each other and enjoy each
| other's company.
|
| For me, marriage is really about serving one-another every day.
| It's not about my happiness, desires, wants, it's about making
| sure my wife is satisfied and happy. My wife does the same for
| me. The moment you start being selfish and only try to get what
| you want and not work with your spouse/partner to help them
| achieve their dreams/wants, that's when things start to crumble.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| Another factor might be differences in libido...something that's
| not as big a factor with the relationship is new, as both are
| more willing to meet in the middle. I'm in the middle of the LAST
| difference in Libido in our marriage (she's hit menopause, my
| Testosterone is waning, but not as fast as hers)...and it's
| literally the only friction point in an otherwise wonderful
| marriage. Money is better, kids are moving on, and I can see that
| eventually our libidos will again be in alignment.
|
| I also see why the old guy divorces his longtime wife for the
| younger, fresher, gal...and by the time SHE'S hitting menopause,
| he's there too. I don't see that happening in my case, but if
| there were other issues in a marriage, I could see how it might
| be a stronger lever to getting out of that marriage.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It's also a reason to be poly.
|
| It's unreasonable to believe that two people are going to be
| able to satisfy all of each other's needs for 30+ years.
|
| Serial monogamy is accepted in our culture but it's an immoral
| solution that doesn't take commitment seriously and assumes you
| can just throw people away. I've seen people get that "new
| relationship energy", jump into a new "monogamous" relationship
| and then a year or two later they are breaking up with that
| person. Passionate love is really its own thing that is all the
| better when you don't confuse it with raising children, growing
| old with someone, etc.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| See, I'd like the idea of getting that scratch itched, I just
| don't want to risk -everything-else-we've-built-together on
| it.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Different people have different experiences.
|
| It is very possible your spouse will be 100% cool with it
| and even experience "compersion" which is taking pleasure
| in you being happy. (Mine does) She might see this as
| better than getting nagged about it, dutifully trying to do
| something and leaving everybody disappointed, or just
| finding you hard to live with because you're not satisfied.
|
| If you look at forums where people talk about poly life
| though you see there are big variations in the quality of
| consent. For instance sometimes one partner cheats and then
| tries to get their spouse to consent with it after the
| fact. Sometimes one partner asks permission and has a hard
| time getting it. Sometimes you can get permission in the
| abstract but when somebody specific comes into focus there
| is a jealousy problem.
|
| I can pass for a "cheating monogamist" because my
| expectations for a metamour are somewhat like that for
| having an affair. That is, there is no expectation of a
| "threesome" and my wife doesn't have to approve anybody,
| although one of the best experiences I can offer somebody
| is coming out to my farm where they will probably meet my
| wife (who teaches people to ride horses) and ideally they
| get along. Other people have elaborate situations where
| there is a triad or a pair of couples, a rule you can only
| sleep over one night a week or other structures that help
| people feel secure.
|
| (Then there are those "unicorn hunters" who are looking for
| a young hot bi babe and all I can say is I hope that you
| realize that is not what poly means to me or most poly
| people.)
| Damogran6 wrote:
| Which all seems like a whole lot more complicated and
| incindiary compared to taking things to hand...but self-
| love isn't as fulfilling.
|
| There was a comic, it had two therapists talking to each
| other, one said "So I suggested they investigate poly",
| the other therapist said "Did that work?" And the first
| therapist said "Ha! Oh GOD no!"
|
| I'm paraphrasing, but I suspect in a lot of cases
| 'looking outside the marriage' sets things in motion I
| really don't want to set in motion.
| awb wrote:
| What rules do you have in place about meeting other
| people in your community or seeing them multiple times?
| Is your partner not concerned that you might fall in love
| with someone else?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| No rules.
|
| My partner and I don't think there is any problem (in
| terms of being able to do it, practical, moral, etc...)
| in loving more than one person at a time. There is a
| limit of how much time and energy that you have to pursue
| relationships, but if you have a 20 hour a week video
| game habit you have "time enough to love" a metamour.
|
| I have read a lot about it and also done a lot of
| introspection and found that being attracted or attached
| to another person doesn't diminish the love I have for my
| wife at all. It's not like there is a certain amount to
| go around but you can experience more. Call me a
| throwback to another place and another time but I have
| little interest in casual sex but I love that feeling of
| falling in love, that feeling when you catch eyes with
| somebody and the next thing you know they sing and invade
| your personal space and when I am not working on a
| relationship I am developing my ability to share these
| feelings with people and give them a really great time as
| well as patching them into a supportive social network
| that includes my family.
| graphpercolator wrote:
| When I have done this the rule I got was from Tommy Lee
| and Pam Anderson back in the day.
|
| There is no multiple times. Just a one off hook up. Just
| sex. Multiple times would be a betrayal of trust.
|
| We only did it a few times but it was fun for sure.
| antiterra wrote:
| This sort of moral superiority argument for open
| relationships largely harms the perception of those
| relationships. It definitely works better for some people,
| but it can be a complete disaster for others. The nature of
| the relationship itself directly spawns challenging
| situations that can trigger intense emotions and insecurity.
| Logical people with very high emotional intelligence who have
| read the latest books on ethical non-monogamy are not
| magically immune to the difficulties.
|
| As an example, I have met a number of people who genuinely
| are not attracted in any significant way to people that are
| not their current partner. Forcing those people into an open
| relationship would only create misery. They simply aren't
| interested in anyone else.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I always pay attention to poly success stories but it always
| seems like, when I scratch beneath the surface, the couples
| have problems just as serious as in monogamous relationships.
| It seems like they're swapping out one set of problems for
| another.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Most of the evidence is that poly people are pretty boring
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33956295/
|
| that is it is not a dangerous lifestyle. Poly people have a
| similar level of satisfaction in most ways as mono people.
| giantg2 wrote:
| " it is not a dangerous lifestyle."
|
| I think that's highly dependent on the rules/steps one
| follows to stay healthy. And many people who rely on
| testing don't have a clue of how to properly use it
| (timing).
| mmcgaha wrote:
| I find other women attractive, but the idea of bedding
| another woman is not appealing to me. The idea of my wife
| laying with another man is damn near infuriating. I don't
| know how anyone could get past the emotional response to
| their husband or wife having a side partner. Mentally, I
| would have to see my wife as just another girlfriend but then
| I would have to question why I am married.
| scrollaway wrote:
| Poly checking in. It's not about the sex necessarily, it's
| more about being able to share yourself with multiple
| people.
|
| I have three people in my life that I share myself with:
| one person I absolutely adore and intend to marry, one I
| like but with whom the connection is purely physical, and
| one I dearly love and who is asexual and never have
| physical contact with.
|
| I have no problem sharing those people either as long as
| the expectations are correctly set. My SOs having sex with
| someone else is a non issue as long as they feel
| comfortable telling me about it (there is no lying or
| breach of trust).
|
| The classic question: is it cheating if you just kiss? If
| you just cuddle? If you just hug? What if it's a hug with
| "more" intent behind it?
|
| The reality is, it's cheating when there is breach of
| trust.
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah, built in male ev-psych concern about sex (and really
| it's the connection to paternity) vs female concern about
| resource investment. Poly people argue you can learn to get
| over these things, but I'm not so sure.
|
| I remember reading poly tends to appear in communities
| where there are men with very high status and wealth. In
| that context it makes sense men would push for harems (like
| a gorilla) and try to persuade others to do this too
| (obviously with more complex better sounding arguments than
| "I want a harem"), but I remain pretty skeptical.
|
| Ultimately people can do what they want. I'm just skeptical
| it'd work out.
|
| Of course it's in my interest to argue that otherwise
| dating gets even worse for men so who knows?
|
| I thought this rationally speaking podcast on the topic was
| great: http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/216-being-a-
| transhumani...
|
| This Sam Harris podcast about why people cheat was also
| really good: https://youtu.be/N4B9krAxIpY
|
| The latter goes into interesting things like how men tend
| to ask "did you sleep with him" and women focus on "do you
| love her". The former being an obvious risk of the baby not
| being yours and "wasting" resources on someone else's baby,
| the latter showing risk of abandonment of investment. The
| selective pressures for this psychology seems reasonable.
| Also sex is a commodity for women, not for (most) men - how
| it's valued is different.
|
| They also talk about why each side cheats (more interesting
| in the women case imo) and things like how women tend to
| (unknowingly) curate backup mate options to protect against
| disaster.
|
| My hypothesis is the nastiness directed towards women that
| sleep around is also tied up in this stuff too. It lowers
| investment required from men. Women have an incentive to
| shame others from doing this even if they don't really know
| why they do so.
| schrijver wrote:
| I'd be careful with ev-psych explanations. It often reads
| as trying to find some rational sounding explanation for
| what are really just social norms. And these norms
| evolve: in my experiences in the free-for-all of app-
| enabled dating, attitudes run the gamut for both men and
| women... you'll meet women looking for casual sex and men
| looking for an emotional connection.
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah this is a fair flag and a risk with this kind of
| thinking I try to be cautious of. It can be hard to know
| what's a cultural norm. Plus there's always over-fitting
| and high variability within a group (always outliers and
| exceptions).
|
| Still, I've so far found it to hold up a lot of the time
| even with apps and modernity. What people say and how
| they behave are different. People often add after the
| fact narratives and say one thing while doing something
| else.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| That's a backwards way of looking at it.
|
| It is typical for passion to fade in relationships and
| superficially it often looks like the woman has lost
| passion first and people come to conclusions like "men
| like sex better than women like sex." I think actually
| women are quicker to get bored with boring monogamous sex
| whereas many men will tolerate mediocre sex (keeps your
| prostate gland for clogging up for one thing...)
|
| The highest libido women have a higher sexual capacity
| than the highest libido men. It's a consequence, for one
| thing, of the refractory period of the male organ.
| Assuming a poly relationship involves some amount of
| emotional closeness and seriousness it's hard to believe
| a poly man can really serve more than 2 or 3 women at a
| time but a woman who is sexually voracious can have 5 or
| more lovers. Quite a few women who are not responsive
| with their husbands might experience a sexual awakening
| with somebody else, if only because of the power of new
| relationship energy.
|
| So Poly in the modern world is not about a man having a
| harem (women have multiple partners too) but instead
| people developing networks for passion, mutual support,
| resource sharing, etc. Personally I have been there and
| done that with children but I still like the feelings of
| falling in love and I want to develop those feelings and
| share them with people as a high art.
| fossuser wrote:
| > "I think actually women are quicker to get bored with
| boring monogamous sex whereas many men will tolerate
| mediocre sex"
|
| Women have easy access to sex in a way that most men
| don't. I think that's probably the reason men are happy
| to have anything. I don't know that I buy women care a
| lot about novel sex after the novelty wears off.
|
| > "a woman who is sexually voracious can have 5 or more
| lovers"
|
| I doubt the men are happy about this for the reasons I
| talk about. Yes, lots of women have lots of partners in
| their 20s when they're high status and lots of men are
| competing for them. IME most burn out of this and find it
| unfulfilling about the time it also starts to become more
| competitive, there's no investment.
|
| > "So Poly in the modern world is not about a man having
| a harem (women have multiple partners too) but instead
| people developing networks for passion, mutual support,
| resource sharing, etc."
|
| This is the thing I'm skeptical of. Men are willing to
| sleep with pretty young women and will put up with
| competing with others if they must (don't have a choice,
| fairly rare for young women not to have some sort of
| partner), but would rather not. Women eventually want
| investment, but will sleep around when they're young to
| size up mates (and because it's fun). High status men
| would be okay with poly if it meant they had lots of
| female partners only and pretend it's all this other
| stuff.
|
| I just don't think you can turn off billions of years of
| selective pressures around these feelings. Maybe you can
| choose to ignore them, but I'm not so sure.
| csallen wrote:
| _> I just don't think you can turn off billions of years
| of selective pressures around these feelings. Maybe you
| can choose to ignore them, but I'm not so sure._
|
| I've been involved in non-monogamous (and sometimes
| polyamorous) relationships for the past 7 years or so.
| What I've found is there are other options besides
| turning off or ignoring difficult feelings. The best
| option, for me at least, has been simply learning how to
| _deal_ with them.
|
| For example, jealousy frequently manifests as an
| obsessive rumination about the new paramour and your
| partner's feelings for them. There are a thousand leaves
| on that tree, and no solace to be found even if you pluck
| each and every one of them. What matters are the hidden
| roots of jealousy, which usually consist of insecurity,
| fueled by uncertainty.
|
| Does my partner still want me? Are they still attracted
| to me? Do they still love me? Do I still turn them on?
| What will happen? Is this the beginning of the end? Will
| our connection suffer? If so, how far will it slide? Will
| we still spend time together, share love together?
|
| These are some of the hidden questions that underly
| jealous ruminations and thoughts. And sometimes the best
| antidote is to simply _ask_ these questions to your
| partner. Ask for reassurance and clarity, so you aren 't
| suffering and wondering. I had one partner in particular
| who was great at anticipating these feelings during
| predictably tough moments, and providing loving
| reassurance in advance. It was magical how quickly it
| dissolved jealousy.
|
| Beyond that, exposure therapy work wonders. Fearing that
| something will harm you, then experiencing it, and
| surviving it with minimal harm, repeatedly. It has a
| dulling effect on fear. You see it in people all over the
| world, who can walk tight ropes, jump out of planes,
| perform on stage in front of millions, approach strangers
| on the street, etc., all without the fear and worry they
| had when they first started. Dealing with jealousy with a
| particular partner isn't a much different mountain to
| climb.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| This. If I were looking for a magic spell to make people
| impervious to seducing and being seduced I would make
| them think the way you do. (e.g. evolutionary psychology,
| black-pill, any-pill, etc.)
|
| I spend my time thinking about the opposite kind of
| spell.
|
| I am feeling limerent for someone right now. When it
| started I was just practicing charming people (which I
| take absolutely seriously, do it to develop metamours,
| but also find gratifying in itself) but then I got a
| response and it really got to me.
|
| I don't compare this person to anyone else. I can't say
| she is a "7" or an "8" or "9". I don't idealize her
| absolutely but for all practical purposes she is perfect.
| I know she is receptive, I know she is vulnerable, I know
| she'll be disappointed if I don't take the next step. I
| could go into my past and remember being bullied in
| school and have many reasons to think I don't measure up
| but I don't go there because she is on the hook and I
| know I am good enough.
|
| Also I know most people aren't that good about
| relationships, don't understand their own feelings, don't
| understand other people, don't see other people, don't
| listen, are too self-centered, etc. Based on my own
| ignorance and not wanting to feed my grandiosity (and
| conjugate feelings of worthlessness) I resist deciding
| what percentile my seduction skills are in, but I know my
| results aren't drawn from the same statistical
| distribution as the median person.
|
| If you look at survey studies it's not so obvious that
| young people who are having casual sex are motivated by
| the desire for sex so much as what casual sex means for
| their relationship with the group. This is true for both
| women and men in somewhat different ways. (those "pickup
| artists" who I distance myself from are a _homosocial_
| community of men who like to boast about their conquests
| with other men and compare their experiences with
| abstract models who seem impervious to the many joys you
| can get from being a woman)
|
| If you are looking at love as a process of comparison,
| sizing up, or sampling you are not going to feel it. If
| you jump in with both feet it's something different.
|
| As for pretty young women I am still scratching my head
| because I see a lot of them and it's dawned on me that
| against all odds some of them like me as an animal but I
| agree with this guy
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stendhal
|
| that love starts with admiration. It's easy for me to
| admire somebody my own age who's got a lot of history and
| accomplishments but I haven't figured out how to deeply
| admire somebody young. I'm getting good at "showing not
| telling" my appreciation for their looks but I if I want
| to get good quality love and lust out of them in I need
| to see something that other people don't see and learning
| to see that and communicate that I see that is important.
|
| I don't have any time for defeatism, actually I get
| better advice from my imaginary friends than I get from
| rationalists and manospherists.
|
| The paradoxical thing is that evolutionary psychology
| seems to have little relevance to human sexual behavior.
| Probably hunter-gatherers were poly. Female orgasm is a
| thing but is by no means necessary for reproduction.
| Different cultures have very different ideas about love,
| family structure, etc. (Stehdahl's book _On Love_ claims
| that attitudes were widely different in different
| countries in Europe and even in times a few decades apart
| in France.)
| csallen wrote:
| _> it's not so obvious that young people who are having
| casual sex are motivated by the desire for sex so much as
| what casual sex means for their relationship with the
| group._
|
| This was anecdotally true for me, at least. My group of
| male friends put sex on a pedestal in such a way that
| having sex with women made me more popular and highest
| status my male friends, and boosted my self-esteem as
| well. It's not that sex wasn't enjoyable for its own sake
| (especially considering I had so much _less_ of it back
| then), but there were strong, additional non-sex reasons
| to pursue sex. So it 's hard to disentangle all the
| different motivations.
|
| _> I need to see something that other people don 't see
| and learning to see that and communicate that I see that
| is important._
|
| This simultaneously strikes me as both a fascinating line
| of thought _and_ overly simplistic. People aren 't
| endlessly, perfectly competitive and rational the way
| many economic models assume we are. Sometimes being a
| reliable, quality, present, and attentive companion is
| enough to win a person's love and affection, even if
| there's someone "better" out there who might see things
| in them you don't see. And while seeing something unique
| in a person occurs in a moment, lasting companionship is
| lasting by definition. As you said, admiration is only
| the start.
|
| Still, the skill of truly seeing another person in a
| unique way is a good one. It's good for the people you
| know, and it's good for your own self, your ability to
| learn from others, appreciate them, and grow from meeting
| them.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I don't want my women being with other men either. You can
| still be with other women, though, as long as everyone is
| comfortable. It didn't really work for me because I found
| it requires far too much emotional energy and the sex
| wasn't worth it in the end. Having a harem isn't really
| compatible with going to work etc.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Three elements in a relationship are: passion, commitment
| and emotional intimacy. You can have the last two and not
| have the first and if those things are highly developed
| then there doesn't have to be a conflict over loving other
| people also. My wife is by no means "just another
| girlfriend" but I can say the stress over mismatched libido
| that existed for a long time was much worse than any stress
| that comes out of having metamours.
| mercutio2 wrote:
| I'm all for encouraging more societal support for ethical
| non-monogamy, but calling monogamy immoral is really an
| inflammatory way of framing things.
|
| Seems unlikely to win many people over.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I'm not saying "monogamy" is immoral but that "serial
| monogamy" as it is often practiced is. That is, I have seen
| so many people find a new person really exciting, something
| they could get over if they could experience having an
| exciting time with that person without having to break up
| their relationships to do it.
|
| (Alternately "unrealistic" might be another adjective to
| use: people really do get bored, they really do desire
| excitement. There is nothing wrong with pursuing passion
| because you are bored but almost all the time when you do
| this it is going to burn out... So trading a boring stable
| relationship for excitement is going to almost always hurt
| people, have a harmful effect, and thus be "wrong" or
| "immoral" in my eyes.)
| Kye wrote:
| edit: nope
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| I don't find the word "failed" to be helpful at all. I
| was married for 15 years. We divorced. I do not look back
| on that relationship and consider it "failed." It lasted
| for 15 years, most of them were great and we accomplished
| a lot of incredible things through our partnership. Both
| of us have moved on to new relationships and we are still
| friends. I consider that relationship to be highly
| successful.
|
| Of course, my experience took a great deal of emotional
| maturity, which was developed through a series of
| monogamous relationships. Serial monogamy gets a bad rap
| IMO. Luckily I have enough emotional maturity to know
| that I don't have enough emotional maturity to pull of
| poly. In my reasonably broad experience with poly folks,
| the vast majority don't either.
| dleslie wrote:
| Indeed! It's like a good TV series: knowing when
| something should end isn't always admitting defeat, it
| can be acknowledging that a good thing has run its course
| to its successful completion.
|
| Too many things are maintained well past the point of a
| positive possible ending.
| antiterra wrote:
| There's nothing in a non-monogamous relationship that
| prevents feelings of rejection or loss when a partner
| loses interest. It's a very small comfort to have other
| partners when one you care deeply about adds distance.
| Kye wrote:
| edit: people were misreading and projecting and I don't
| care to engage with it or accumulate more.
| antiterra wrote:
| I've been in a non-monogamous relationship for an
| extremely long time, and 'there are tools' or 'read this
| book' are both very simplistic attitudes about the
| challenges.
| throwamon wrote:
| Isn't part of the issue that you need such a "toolbox"?
| It not only requires the usual maturity and mental
| preparation to deal with other people, there's also an
| entire set of extra complications and "conventions" (?)
| you (and any of your partners) need to get used to.
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| Yes. Poly is great if it works for you but it's
| definitely relationship grad school.
|
| The complexity grows exponentially with the number of
| people and the ways in which they are connected.
|
| It's not unlike software. To torture an analogy, much of
| the "toolbox" and the conventions exist to provide
| standardized interfaces and help to reduce coupling
| between people/areas that don't need to be coupled.
| flatline wrote:
| The glut of marriage counseling options, religious
| counseling, and relationship self help books indicate
| this is a more universal need than for just poly
| relationships.
|
| Non-monogamy does not just come in one form, either.
| Kinsey showed that people are not so monogamous as
| everyone assumes, 50+ years ago. Social norms are still
| catching up.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Sometimes things can come naturally. In my poly
| prehistory I once wanted badly to go on a date with a
| cute girl who worked in an office next to mine, told my
| wife, and she said I should go for it.
|
| Other times things don't go naturally and then is why we
| need "toolboxes" for relationships, no matter what kind.
|
| For me I have been exploring my emotions and my ability
| to transmit emotions to other people. I plant feelings
| like seeds, kindle them into a roaring fire, can compress
| them into a ball and they hit someone like a lightning
| bolt. It's a power that brings responsibility because you
| can just easily if not more easily hurt somebody that way
| as opposed to draw them in.
|
| There is a structure to falling in love and it's better
| to develop it than to be pushed around by randomness. Not
| a lot of people talk about it for a few reasons:
| (1) The gap between desperation and being overcommitted
| is small (2) Love is a dangerous game. Pickup
| isn't because people in casual situations wall off their
| feelings but no matter how much you expel hostility,
| sadistic tendencies and are sensitive to avoid accidental
| slights and interruptions of mirroring it's inevitable
| that you're going to hurt anyone who becomes attached to
| you because you're either going to break up or "death
| will do you part"
| kingcharles wrote:
| I mostly agree with this, but women's libido is such a complex
| beast compared to a man's. I've found it very hard as a man in
| the past to pay attention to the factors that affect my
| partner's sex drive, especially stress. Stress is a variable
| that I find tends to increase throughout adulthood as more
| responsibilities are piled onto your life. Stress is a huge
| factor in reducing a woman's libido, and men need to realize
| that their partner's desire for sex works in a totally
| different way to theirs, for the most part.
| [deleted]
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Unfortunately, this reminds me of things that track economic
| cycles and try to claim there is something meaningful to typical
| historical lengths of time between economic booms and busts. They
| often focus on the detail of "x years" without successfully tying
| it to something meaningful and then come up with mathematical
| models based on that and then you see books or articles
| predicting the next recession because "we are due/ it's that
| time" and those are somewhat often wrong.
|
| It is somewhat unusual for me to see meaningful analysis of
| underlying causes of such things. I'm mostly not a big believer
| in "well, x amount of time passed" as an explanation for much of
| anything. (Like with anything, there are exceptions.)
|
| I also dislike the use of _your_ in the title, which contradicts
| the statement in the article that these are averages and your
| experience may be different.
| chrisdbanks wrote:
| Seems to be correlated with when you have young kids. Not
| surprising really as having young kids is like having a grenade
| set off in your relationship.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Not surprising really as having young kids is like having a
| grenade set off in your relationship
|
| I heard this a lot before I had kids. Then we had kids and it
| was not only fine, but actually enjoyable.
|
| Yes, there was a short-term increase in stress and reduction in
| personal time, but the key factor missing from online
| discussions on the topic is that the stressful low-sleep,
| diaper-changing period isn't all that long. A couple percent of
| your lifetime, really.
|
| The other thing the internet kids think pieces never really
| mentioned was that, as a parent, you actually _like_ your kids
| and spending time with them. There 's so much media that
| portrays children as some sort of endless chore and drain on
| your time, but it turns out that it's actually a ton of fun to
| play with your kids and help them grow.
| jethro_tell wrote:
| Heh, we were about the same. Add in that sweet tech oncall
| lifestyle for me and sleep deprivation was either not an
| issue or didn't change my personality basis so the stress was
| quite limited.
|
| The under one years were at a time in my career when I was
| working at 2am most nights anyway. A few minutes to hang out
| and take care of someone no love was a nice break. Mom slept
| pretty much through the night after the first couple of
| weeks.
|
| Decade and 1/2 in and I can't see things getting worse, but
| we'll see.
| balfirevic wrote:
| > The other thing the internet kids think pieces never really
| mentioned was that, as a parent, you actually like your kids
| and spending time with them.
|
| Well, that's the core of the issue, isn't it? I know people
| who were really looking forward to having children, wanted
| them, and anticipated that they would enjoy it - so expected
| personal sacrifice was not that big of an issue. It's just
| what you had to do to enjoy having kids.
|
| Media that portrays children as a chore, on the other hand,
| matches the thought process of someone who looks at having
| children (potentially including their own childhood) and
| thinks "why would someone want that?". It was a welcome
| balance, speaking as someone who barely came across portrayal
| of children as anything other than the source of joy and
| something that everyone - surely - wants. It was a different
| media landscape 10-15 years ago, and I like the current one
| better even if not maximally nuanced.
| m4x wrote:
| You're not wrong, but the "couple percent of your lifetime"
| high stress period is still long enough to irreparably damage
| relationships.
|
| Not everybody enjoys time with their kids, either. I'm truly
| glad you do, but that isn't universal.
|
| There's such a huge spectrum of experiences for parents.
| Listening to the experience of others in our post natal
| groups was really interesting for that reason. Some people
| just get it so easy, and some people seem to be living
| nightmares. There's no real rhyme or reason to it.
| digbybk wrote:
| This might just be an assumption. We'd need to compare with
| childless couples. As a datapoint of one, I'm getting close to
| 40, just over 10 years of marriage without children, and this
| article describes my experience eerily well and has given me
| real pause.
| leokennis wrote:
| Having kids is weird. I love them a lot, but I also severely
| miss my life and relationship with my wife from before I had
| them.
| Arubis wrote:
| I can relate; that said, a confounding factor I've been
| unable to disambiguate is raising young kids _during a
| pandemic_. How much of the challenge was typical parenting?
| How much was doing it in a world on fire when it was unsafe
| for the kids' grandparents to travel and help out, and
| mothers' groups weren't a thing, etc.?
|
| My wife and I just recently had our first no-kids date night
| since last Father's Day (just short of a year ago). It was
| pretty great! The connection is still there. But it was also
| _surreal_, and I can totally see how couples just lose
| themselves in the chaos. It worries me sometimes.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| and by 7:15 you're looking at your watch and one of you
| comments "I wonder how the kids are doing?"
| Arubis wrote:
| Ha! We're still working up to that--this was "babysitter
| arrives after the kids are asleep & we'll go somewhere in
| walking distance". Same vibe, though.
| beardyw wrote:
| Wait till they grow up and leave home. Then you will miss
| them, and they don't call.
| watwut wrote:
| You dont get life before kids back when kids grow. Too many
| years passed in the meantime. The world is not the same.
| You are older and a lot of activities you have done before
| are harder. The former friends moved on and you have to
| build new ones.
| ip26 wrote:
| Yeah, but you might also realize many of those activities
| were (unbeknownst to you) essentially performative
| displays to attract a partner, with little inherent
| worth.
| watwut wrote:
| Might. But very likely won't. And even if they were, it
| does not matter. You are still need to find the
| replacement, still need to fill the void. Otherwise you
| will just sit on sofa depressed and feel pointless.
| [deleted]
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| One of my childless friends like to say that children ruin
| everything. They're right, but they also lack the imagination
| that beyond the wreckage of "everything" (e.g. your former
| life) is a new life that could be better than the old. It
| took me a long time to understand that. (I probably had
| postpartum depression.)
|
| What I'd tell my former self is: start doing everything in my
| life to optimize for my own perceived agency in this new
| life. I started doing the things that I'd previously delayed
| for "retirement" now, albeit with much smaller time
| investments. (Working toward decoupling time from pay.) If
| there are relationship issues, then start working on those,
| too. And, for heaven's sake, once the kid can be watched by
| family/friends, start doing so.
|
| Good luck. HTH!
| Arubis wrote:
| That lines up with other studies I've seen elsewhere; for
| better or for worse, this entire proposed curve does (dip when
| the kids arrive, then slow but steady rise in happiness till
| self-reported values exceed childless couples). That makes the
| choice to have children a necessary variable to control for;
| otherwise this meta-analysis is about as diagnostic as a
| mid-2000's Internet personality test.
|
| Anecdotally, very young kids in and of themselves are in fact
| pretty great! It's the logistics around child-rearing that are
| soul-crushing. Or, glibly: having kids good, early parenting
| bad.
| Axsuul wrote:
| What would make the logistics part better? Would it be hiring
| dedicated help?
| ativzzz wrote:
| It would be having community that helps ease the burden of
| child rearing. Grandparents, neighbor friends with kids,
| etc
| watwut wrote:
| The trouble is, such community requires payback. You need
| ot just take, you need to give. And often in ways you
| don't like giving or more then you like. It requires a
| lot more negotiation with more people, compromise about
| what we are used to be autonomous in and conformity.
|
| The strong individualism is not really compatible with
| that.
|
| On HN when these structures are talked about, it is
| always only in terms of essentially free labor from
| extended family.
| Arubis wrote:
| I had many moments of thinking "is there a product here?"
| Most things that help aren't products.
|
| We nibble around the logistic edges with buying our time
| back: a front-door laundry service, a lot of delivery meals
| when we had a newborn during peak Covid, Amazon Prime for
| virtually everything. "Acquiring consumer stuff" is fairly
| solved.
|
| We had a nanny for a while, and that had a lot of upsides,
| but having a family-like relationship that's actually
| transactional is extra overhead to manage. Nice while it
| was working well, though.
|
| My local pizza joint's app has a "repeat last delivery
| order" that comes in handy.
|
| Ultimately, though, the hard parts remain hard. When a kid
| is sick or doesn't sleep through the night, who's skipping
| work tomorrow? How do we tag-team our way to survive till
| bedtime? Do I not bill out a client today so my wife can
| get enough of a break from the kids to stay sane--and vice-
| versa?
|
| It's very isolating. This feels like a fabric-of-society
| issue to which the product-and-services-to-solve-it
| mentality, however well-intentioned in the moment, is kinda
| how we ended up here in the first place.
|
| There isn't an app or a service that'll make living in the
| states (or, I gather, much of the west, albeit to a lesser
| degree) less individualized and more communal.
| ericd wrote:
| To your point about becoming more communal, we found this
| the other day:
| https://www.cohousing.org/directory/wpbdp_category/comm/
|
| We haven't tried it, but this looks like it could be
| great if you find a group you're compatible with.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| It's a potted summary and so in some ways hardly worth thinking
| about or responding to, but ... given that the divorce is roughly
| in the range of 50%, this sort of presentation appears to
| completely ignore the implications of that.
|
| My first marriage took place when I was 25 and lasted a bit more
| than 10 years. I met my second wife when I was 38, and have been
| in a relationship with her for more than 20 years now.
|
| As a result, my 40s were a high point for me, not a low point.
| Even though we had children and all the challenges that brings,
| 40-48 was probably 8 of the best years of my life (and I think my
| wife feels broadly the same).
|
| Had my first marriage survived, maybe the pattern would have been
| similar to what is outlined in article (although maybe it
| wouldn't). Either way, an article that fails to note that many
| Americans actually _start_ new relationships in their 40s seems
| to be missing something rather important.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| My anecdotal experience is that happiness dips most when the
| realization that there is no "win" button in life sets in. Call
| it a mid-life crisis, or whatever, but for me, when I hit 36
| which was the first age I had reached as an adult that I had
| clear memories of my father reaching as a child, it hit me that
| this was "it" in terms of life experiences[1]. You worked, you
| aged, you had holidays with family and friends, and then you
| died.
|
| That realization led me to focus more on quality of life _now_
| over aspirations of a "future" quality of life.
|
| [1] At 36 I had "experienced" my Dad's life for the last 26 years
| or so and saw it to be relatively unchanged over that period. As
| a result, I felt I could expect little change in terms of social
| position or relative wealth etc, in the next 25 years of my life.
| I needed to spend time _enjoying_ my life not planning on
| enjoying it at some future date.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'd go a step further and say the cards are stacked against
| most individuals. It seems problems increase in frequency and
| seriousness for most people as they age. At least that's how I
| see it around age 30.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I am going to lightly disagree with you :-). I think it is
| absolutely true that our future lives are the product of our
| past decisions, but "problems" (or challenges) can sometimes
| lead to better forward thinking.
|
| As an engineer I know so many people who were the first in
| their family to have "lots" of money and they chose to spend
| it as if it would always be there, until it wasn't. Their
| challenges in adapting or supporting a burn rate that was
| unsustainable, could be directly traced back to their choice
| to live "beyond their means" as we say, which is to say
| spending all the money they were making and saving none in
| case of an issue later.
|
| I was lucky (and there is tremendous randomness to life) to
| marry someone while I was young who was much more fiscally
| conservative than I was. As a result of that, I was able to
| experience times when she had insisted on saving and it
| turned a "bad situation" into a "manageable" one. People I
| knew and worked with had less pleasant outcomes.
|
| Today, it feels like (although I don't know if it actually is
| true) that the whole "getting married" thing is out of favor.
| And yet being married and having two people who could work so
| at least one of us was providing employee provided medical
| benefits etc, kept "calamitous downturns" (which happen
| regularly in Silicon Valley) from feeling like the end of the
| world.
|
| So I look back and see the _choice_ I made to get married
| early as a choice that provided a mitigation of the negative
| impacts of events that happened after I got married. In terms
| of bad choices, when the dot com boom was in full swing I had
| stocks that I could have sold and paid off my house mortgage.
| I chose not to, yes explicitly thought about it and said to
| myself, "nope." I only saw the down side of that choice of
| incurring a bunch of taxes, and hey I was making the payments
| easily on my current salary and so I deferred.
|
| Then when the crash came and the company where I was working
| was evaporating around me as its customers were filing
| chapter 7 bankruptcies, I was looking at finding a new job
| and still having a mortgage that my now GREATLY devalued tech
| stocks would pay down but certainly wouldn't retire that
| debt. Ageism is definitely real in the valley and I was
| concerned I wouldn't be able to find a new job, would have
| this mortgage and a family to support, and would end up
| taking any job I could find just to survive, or selling the
| house and relocating to somewhere where the cost of living
| was once again within my means.
|
| The hardest thing for me is being honest with myself and
| really looking at how and why I chose the way I do. I find I
| can convince myself that the decision I _want_ to make is the
| right one, even when there is clear evidence that it is not
| the better choice in terms of mitigating future risk. Being
| burned a few times has helped train me to listen to those
| warning signs.
| artur_makly wrote:
| i found these radical concepts proposed in 80/80 Marriage to be
| very innovative.
|
| Here's a 1hr talk the authors ( a couple ) gave at Google:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9i3LFEZRns
| thedudeabides5 wrote:
| Would be nice to see this broken down monthly instead of in ten
| year increments.
| rubicon33 wrote:
| Wow, I needed this article.
|
| Wife and I have been together for almost 10 years. The last 2-3
| have been the hardest. The last 1, the hardest of the last 3.
|
| Why?
|
| I've asked myself that many times.
|
| Love fades, that's definitely part of it. Hormones drop, and that
| "natural" urge to be with your partner wanes. At the same time,
| careers are shifting into overdrive. Promotions and
| responsibilities pile up. Work becomes the MAIN focus in life (if
| you don't have kids).
|
| At some point the stress of life can change people, slowly but
| over years someone can end up bitter, jaded, and difficult to be
| with. I think that's part of what we are dealing with. After a
| decade of hard work, we haven't done enough to ensure we are
| happy living with each other.
|
| In other words, we've taken each other for granted for too long.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| > Work becomes the MAIN focus in life (if you don't have kids).
| //
|
| That seems like it's probably your own choice, or you've
| followed societal norms. You don't have to.
| [deleted]
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