August will be 39 years for us. My wife is my best friend. She works for me in my business. We share quality time every day. We've had our ups and downs, but our marriage is a success. We enjoy traveling together and share many common interests. I just had hip replacement surgery and she took over responsibility for all the things I couldn't do while I was healing without a whimper. Marriage requires a lot of work and some good luck, but can be very rewarding for those who are successful at it.

 

I knew that you'd chime in, George!

 

The marriage-not-taken-seriously-because-of-divorce-rates arguments is severely flawed. Marriage is supposed to be a lifelong unification of two people; for happiness. If people are unhappy, why stay married? In my eyes I see the divorce rate climbing as being an increasing sign that people are waking up to their inner desires, not wanting to settle, and no longer feeling socially bound. Last time I checked, people get divorced for reasons. Not too many people wake up and go "Eh it's Wednesday *flips through channel list*, bummer nothings on. Guess I'll go get divorced." Maybe the divorce rate has climbed because too many people have inflated ego's, too much selfishness in relationships, not enough giving, too much materialism, not enough room to grow. Divorce doesn't break apart a marriage, people break apart a marriage, divorce is just the lifeboat you use to row back to shore.

Marriage is as beautiful or as hellish as you make it; just like the rest of life. End of story.

 

sorry to repeat myself but i dont see how any of those pros you list as being available to married people ONLY.

I was originally asking about how marriage negatively affects a relationship, not how have you enjoyed your marriage. but thank you for the input, regardless.

whiteflash touches on a good point. it seems like getting married may make people coexist together much more than before. potentially bringing up issues that are harder to tolerate given the frequency (sharing a bed, bathroom, finances, etc). solution would seem to be that people can be together without physically being together all the time. too much of anything is bad - school of thought.

magician, you may be correct by the textbook, but i would claim that languages evolve. you dont speak the same way they did in Shakespearean times, do you? how would you respond if someone told you it was correct to speak that way? while you may think certain words "clutter" a language, others may disagree. The point in the end is that the thoughts are conveyed. if you insist on sticking to the way things ought to be or were, you may be correct, but you also may not be able to communicate with newer generations. just a thought.

 

There's no question that languages evolve. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. We should encourage the former and discourage the latter.

Adding words to a sentence that do nothing to improve clarity or efficiency (or beauty) can hardly be termed an improvement. The construction under discussion does exactly that; it should be discouraged.

 

Several years ago my wife and I worked at the same company, though in different departments. We commuted together, and frequently lunched together.

One of my coworkers once asked me how I could stand being around my wife 24 hours a day.

I asked him why anyone would consider marrying someone they couldn't stand being around 24 hours a day.

Just a thought.

 

this thread just asked for it.

 

Here's the thing dyhppy; a marriage can't negatively affect a relationship. Marriage isn't tangible, it's a word to describe a union that already exists. People negatively affect a relationship, not marriage. Those who blame 'marriage' on the walls of their union crumbling are too weak to look into the mirror to see that it is actually themselves crumbling. You get out what you put in.

 

lol, ur completely correct.

so technically, im asking, does entering into this intangible union shift something in the minds of the people involved, causing them to become destructive of said union?

 

It depends on the person. People tend to be lazy, we like to cut corners. When things are guaranteed (food, work, love, water) we take them for granted, we care about them less, and we put less effort into obtaining and keeping them. This is typical in relationships, they (sub)conciously think that because there's a legal binding of the two people that they have now 'obtained' them, and no longer need to do the same upkeep to keep them around.

Think about it like a lease-to-own car (even though leasing is pretty retarded most of the time):

When you're leasing a car you've got a laundry list of stipulations, between mileage, upkeep. You wash the car more, keep the interior cleaner, you may get 3500mile oil changes. Then 3 years go by, and you decide to buy the car out. Now you do acceptable 6-7k mileage changes, wash it every 2 weeks instead of every week, a soda spills on the carpet oh well, etc.

We here in this country have been socially trained to do as little as necessary, basically from the moment we hit school. School teaches us that we only need short term memories, and short term results. A 95/100 on a test is a 95/100 whether you know the material or not. Why spend 2 hrs of homework and studying, when you only need 15 minutes to fill out the sheet? Humans aren't naturally this way, but we've been trained to be.

As I'm sure we all know, cutting corners in relationships doesn't really work, and/or doesn't work for long. The other half gets fed up with being treated less than they should be. Perhaps they're guilty of the same thing, and we're retaliating. Or we're both just independently guilty. Who knows; either way there's your root. You don't continue to water the corn after you just picked the harvest do you? Even if it's good for the soil, for the roots, for the environment you've built. Unfortunately, we don't tend to do that