Quote Originally Posted by painm8ker View Post
Posh,

I have two points for you to consider, I am an Orphan for all intents and purposes, I had no family as a child to speak of, does that mean you think no one should ever marry me? I Don't think this is what you meant but that's what your statement says. I know a lot of people from screwed up family's or no family at all who turn out OK (don't punish the son for the sins of the father). I agree the odds are better with someone from a "healthy" family life but to write off those of us who didn't get that chance without ever meeting us seems a little harsh.

You also said "I don't think there is any obstacle that cannot be overcome in a marriage, short of abuse and addiction." You left off infidelity, you seem to have issues with that too based on your pretty woman post and no, infidelity is not an addiction. I think the heart of all the issues to end a marriage is trust. All kinds of things can lead to the trust going out of a marriage but once that happens its time to part ways.

Great posts BTW very thought provoking and informative.
I'm glad you don't think that's what I meant because it wasn't. I think you understand that I don't think you are not marriage material.

Let's be real: someone or a group of someone's brought you up from infancy to adulthood. If you have no "traditional" family of which to speak, then your adoptive family has to give you your roots and hopefully they were good.

I left off infidelity purposely. I think a relationship can come back from infidelity, and in should in the case of children. To assume that all bets are off once someone cheats is sometimes tantamount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I have some girlfriends who choose to stay with their husbands even after infidelity. Some people have basically good marriages and don't want to loose their 10, 20, 30 year marriages over a tawdry male or female sl*t. Some people do. I wouldn't be one of those people, quite honestly. I'm not an all-or-nothing person generally.

Pretty Woman I have issues with because I don't like to see prostitutes take wealthy men out of circulation. It's really a market share thing and territory thing. Let hookers have low-level middle management, not governors and CEOs.

Quote Originally Posted by Emperor Penguin View Post
Attacking the messenger instead of the message? We are not talking about my personal life or yours, so quit speculating.

You do discuss a point that I agree on: success in marriage is a matter of mutual will. No ****. That is a very simple concept, but it is a folly to assume that all people act with those serious intentions. You cannot deny that there are selfish people everywhere, both men and women. However, men have every right to cry louder when they fail in marriage because they have lost more financially. The fact is undeniable that men make more money than women, and women have more to gain financially in the event of divorce. Given this apparent inequality between the genders (i.e., men making more money than women), there is little wonder why the ideal of mutual will would be difficult to attain. Conniving wives throwing fits at their husbands to get goods, divorcing wives suing to get half or more of the marital estate, etc.

A lifetime of bliss, "'till death do us part," is indeed a worthy endeavor and a fundamental part of life in general. Many have achieved that, we cannot deny. However, to stubbornly dwell solely on the ideals of marriage without any regard to the harsh realities of divorce would be foolish. Marriage is beautiful, yes, but divorce has its ugly side, too.
I wasn't "attacking the messanger" and don't want to speculate. That's why I asked you a legitimate question that you can feel free to answer or not. Your viewpoints tend to skew one way towards the marital disaster end of the spectrum and I want to know why. People don't automatically discount millenia old societal instituitions without a reason why. If you do hold these views without a real objective or even subjective reason, your arguments hold no sway whatsoever. You're arguing the point just to argue.

I'm not ignorant of the "evil" other side of marriage, it just doesn't strike me as the prevailing majority or even minority of marriages, as studies typically indicate. This begs the question as to what you've seen or experienced that would make marriage seem like this unfettered jackpot for Jezebelian women and this downward emotional and financial spiral for unsuspecting, virtuous men.

And it seems like you're implying that women in these marriages you're profiling don't work and are just sitting around and waiting to divorce their husbands because they didn't want to be with them to begin with. There are just as many women who stand to lose out financially because they are well-to-do and the men they are with are unemployed or usually under employed. Some men, but not the majority men as feminists would like you to believe, make more than women but that is a balance that is quickly shifting. I know of a few friends with men who bring very little to their relationships other than themselves, which is fine for some people. Marrying these men would put them in the same position as any man that has achieved the same thing as they have.