Why men won't marry you

[CabinetMaker]

What defines a child cannot be determined by age. A person may be old enough to sign a contract and still be a child in my book. The concept of contract is useless in determining who is a child and who isn't.

Age is the primary determination of when somebody is a child, adolescent, teen and adult. Cognitive development is entirely different and not a measure of childhood or adulthood. A 15 year old is a teen, not an adult.

 

[shagster01]

Which is wrong.

Maybe it's right and the contract age is wrong.

 

[CabinetMaker]

Maybe it's right and the contract age is wrong.

For the reasons already posted by TH, charging a child or teen add an adult is wrong. The lack of impulse control due to immature brains must be taken into consideration.

 

[shagster01]

For the reasons already posted by TH, charging a child or teen add an adult is wrong. The lack of impulse control due to immature brains must be taken into consideration.

Let me guess, that impulse was easier to control when life expectancy was shorter....

 

[CabinetMaker]

Let me guess, that impulse was easier to control when life expectancy was shorter....

Probably not. But then it wasn't known before the dawn of modern medicine. For interesting reading, look into the history of how the justice system in this country treated women. It is fascinating what women routinely got away with. Should we go back to that standard as well?

 

[BOLCATS]

Age is the primary determination of when somebody is a child, adolescent, teen and adult. Cognitive development is entirely different and not a measure of childhood or adulthood. A 15 year old is a teen, not an adult.

Why? Because you say so? Because the law says so? What is a teen anyway? It is modern social construct. It is strictly an age range and tells us nothing about what makes an adult different than a teen.

 

[CabinetMaker]

Why? Because you say so? Because the law says so? What is a teen anyway? It is modern social construct. It is strictly an age range and tells us nothing about what makes an adult different than a teen.

Because we as a society have determined that the terms I listed have meaning. We expect that children depend on others. We expect that teens are learning to cats for themselves. We expect that adults can care for themselves. We know that the age of individuals is a good indicator of maturity.

 

[Town Heretic]

...It's not good for a man to be alone. (or woman) It's a human rights issue. The ones marriage works for have the right to have it.

Denying the reasonableness of it isn't denying the right. You have the right to drink until you're intoxicated. The first time I did that I went to sleep happy and woke without a hangover. But that's not how it is for most and I'll speak against it and the misery that overwhelms the temporary enjoyment for most.

Oh, so you weren't driven by your biological imperative?

I'm pretty sure the imperative was covered in my answer.

It wasn't you getting married because the time was right for you?

The time was right? Well, the problem with that remains that seven out of ten people who believe it's the right time and person are dead wrong.

...I was having unrelenting bowel issues that "mysteriously" vanished when we married. I was stressed to the max and had had some strange sicknesses related to stress. I was also a happy and optimistic person as much as I could be and cheerful on the outside. When I married my health became robust quickly.

I don't know why you were having that sort of response to being single, but it's highly unusual, as is your success.

I never romantically entangled myself. I was morally opposed to dating. My fiancée was my first kiss.

Then I'd say you were the reason for your own unhappiness. No wonder you were a wreck.

So it was unnatural for you to be without a female companion and it caused you stress, making you consider a more serious kind of relationship? How long did you stay solitary that way?

No, it's only that I always had a girl and a relatively serious relationship, or a series of girls and lesser relationships. I thought that was how a young man was meant to function.

Eventually I wondered if I wasn't a slave to the need for someone to complete me and decided that before I found anyone to share my life with I'd need to feel complete without them, that I could then find someone I wanted to spend my life with instead of using them on any level to fill in a missing something in me. It took two years to get to the place where my happiness stood alone. Once I cleared that up I understood more clearly what I was and wasn't looking for and I knew whoever I eventually found would be someone I wanted instead of something I needed.

Some people report that their spouse or SO saved their life in one way or another.

I'm sure that's true.

But it's a lie if you tell yourself you don't need to share yourself and your life.

It's a lie for an alcoholic to say he doesn't want a drink. It doesn't follow that it's good for him to sate his thirst because he feels he needs to.

I think if it's a need that controls your action its not a virtue or particularly good for you. Now people at the age you were in have, by virtue of that biological impairment, greatly reduced impulse control, so much of life is driven by the feeling of need, but most of that is an illusion born of fear and insecurity and poor wiring, which is why so much of the effort to feed that need ends badly much more often than not.

Many would rather prolong a contentious, difficult situation than live alone.

I'm sure you're right. I'm equally sure they're making a mistake.

My first crush wasn't my fiancée

I not only didn't say crush, I said serious emotional connection. I take it he was yours.

But the mother of my first crush actually was happily married at 17. For them it worked out great to go along with that first romance, and they were both loyal and tenderhearted, two essentials.

Like I've said, I'm sure it happens, three out of ten times. Horrible gamble for a young life and worse for the kids that may come.

It wasn't a foolish choice for me, and isn't for a third of those who try.

Bad odds. Every one of the people who made that call thought they were different. Seven in ten were wrong and paid for it, as did their children if they had any.

That only proves that a larger percentage are fools with hard hearts, while 1/3 choose wisely.

Everyone thinks they're wise on that score, right in their choice. Most aren't.

You say "most" like you get anything better than a dicy gamble 5 years or a decade later.

At twenty five you're happy sixty six percent of the time. That's more than twice as likely as twenty and under, where only 31% are happy. Doubling your odds of happiness and more than tripling your chance of avoiding a broken home isn't dicy. Dicy is gambling your happiness younger, understanding the one sided and negative nature of those odds.

Love is not one of those things you want to overly smother with rules, else you will have rebellion and misery.

The misery here is produced overwhelmingly by people being ruled by impulse instead of wisdom and consideration.

Because it's not right. Social manipulation of those numbers by causing individual tragedies is ugliness.

It isn't the numbers or manipulation that's causing tragedy and ugliness. It's poor judgement that leads to unsuccessful unions because the women and men making them have faulty wiring and little real life experience.

It would have been a tragedy if I had missed the first 5-7 years of my marriage.

It could have easily have been a tragedy anyway. And mostly it tends to be. You're better off waiting. That's just the plain truth.

 

[1PeaceMaker]

Denying the reasonableness of it isn't denying the right.

It's not unreasonable for the right people. And it's not so much of a gamble with good character.

Hard-hearted people divorce. So don't be a hard-hearted person or marry one.

The idea that more individuals are hard-hearted and foolish at a younger age doesn't mean that there aren't tenderhearted and loyal people at that age who show discretion.

You have the right to drink until you're intoxicated. The first time I did that I went to sleep happy and woke without a hangover. But that's not how it is for most and I'll speak against it and the misery that overwhelms the temporary enjoyment for most.

Marriage is a good institution. It's the partners that make it bad, and it's not the age but the mindset. Sure, younger people tend to be more foolish, but there are wise ones, too. More people have to have their hearts broken and be beat up by life before they soften enough for a lasting marriage, but not all people need that.

Then I'd say you were the reason for your own unhappiness. No wonder you were a wreck.

So I should have had serious, emotionally intimate relationships as a teenager to be more happy as a single young woman at around 17-18? But not enjoy marriage? Interesting perspective.

Eventually I wondered if I wasn't a slave to the need for someone to complete me and decided that before I found anyone to share my life with I'd need to feel complete without them, that I could then find someone I wanted to spend my life with instead of using them on any level to fill in a missing something in me.

I realize that you are not an animal, but God gave you an actual need that only someone else can fill. That's the biological imperative and it goes right down to your emotional nature.

I don't need to teach myself to ignore myself. Besides at the same time God brought my soul mate.

It took two years to get to the place where my happiness stood alone. Once I cleared that up I understood more clearly what I was and wasn't looking for and I knew whoever I eventually found would be someone I wanted instead of something I needed.

So you remind me of an anorexic, controlling a biological imperative to get control and feel less like you have needs.

It's a lie for an alcoholic to say he doesn't want a drink. It doesn't follow that it's good for him to sate his thirst because he feels he needs to.

That's like comparing needful food to alcohol. Marriage isn't an indulgence.

I think if it's a need that controls your action its not a virtue or particularly good for you.

You must hate how the need for food controls you... or you are just suffering cognitive dissonance.

Now people at the age you were in have, by virtue of that biological impairment, greatly reduced impulse control, so much of life is driven by the feeling of need, but most of that is an illusion born of fear and insecurity and poor wiring, which is why so much of the effort to feed that need ends badly much more often than not.

I think you are not perceiving the young correctly. More of them than the older set may do this, but it is a matter of values, not biology. It was not inevitable or else I would have been flirting and dating for years prior to my courtship and engagement.

I not only didn't say crush, I said serious emotional connection. I take it he was yours.

First we were best friends 3yrs before the crush. So there was an emotional connection back then that formed. Hearts tend to do that around a certain time in life, whether you want it to or not, I found.

It isn't the numbers or manipulation that's causing tragedy and ugliness. It's poor judgement that leads to unsuccessful unions because the women and men making them have faulty wiring and little real life experience.

It's the hard hearts that cause divorce, 100%.

It could have easily have been a tragedy anyway. And mostly it tends to be. You're better off waiting. That's just the plain truth.

Say that to my first 4 children's faces. Tell them I would have been better off waiting.

 

[Town Heretic]

It's not unreasonable for the right people.

Who can't be determined by the people making the choice, which is why most of them fail and it's a bad idea.

And it's not so much of a gamble with good character. The idea that more individuals are hard-hearted and foolish at a younger age doesn't mean that there aren't tenderhearted and loyal people at that age who show discretion.

I don't agree with your assumption about those whose marriages fail, because their limitations are shared with the fewer who succeed. I've met too many good women whose marriages failed because of very bad men.

Sure, younger people tend to be more foolish, but there are wise ones, too. More people have to have their hearts broken and be beat up by life before they soften enough for a lasting marriage, but not all people need that.

Everyone, prior to the sufficient development of their pre frontal cortex is encumbered by poor judgment, arising more from the areas of the brain that are emotional and less from the areas of the brain suited to actual judgment and are demonstrably subject to poorer impulse control. A cumulative disaster enhanced by a relative lack of life experience.

The result is understandable.

So I should have had serious, emotionally intimate relationships as a teenager to be more happy as a single young woman at around 17-18? But not enjoy marriage? Interesting perspective.

What I'm saying is that at 17 or 18 and on for a bit you're capable of enjoying company, of whatever intensity appeals to you, but not likely ready for more. The numbers bear that out and science gives us insight into why.

I realize that you are not an animal, but God gave you an actual need that only someone else can fill.

I think you think that because you never grew out of it and into something else, didn't give yourself a chance to experience that... I didn't "need" my wife. I wanted her. Different thing. I appreciated her, desired her, but I didn't need her to complete me. Life was good before her. It's better with her. Life was good with her. It's better with Jack.

That's the biological imperative and it goes right down to your emotional nature.

We are creatures of impulse and desires. But we are also something more and that more should rule them. When and to the extent it doesn't we tend to invite misery in ourselves and for others.

So you remind me of an anorexic, controlling a biological imperative to get control and feel less like you have needs.

You sound young to me and you don't seem to understand what I'm saying to you on this point because that isn't it at all. Everyone gets hungry and everyone (or nearly everyone) has the same essential urges. It's what we do with them and how we address them or failing let them rule us that defines us. That's not deprivation, it's maturation.

That's like comparing needful food to alcohol. Marriage isn't an indulgence.

That's not the comparison. I'm noting that a need isn't in and of itself a virtue and sating a compulsion isn't necessarily the road to happiness or the good. In fact, it can be the road to a sort of hell, paved with the best intentions.

I think you are not perceiving the young correctly.

The numbers and science say I am.

It was not inevitable or else I would have been flirting and dating for years prior to my courtship and engagement.

Few things are inevitable, but most things are generally predictable. For instance, most people who get married before their brains are functioning fully will fail in their effort.

Say that to my first 4 children's faces. Tell them I would have been better off waiting.

So you think God can send you a mate, but not those same children in a few years more...that's a curious theology.

 

[bybee]

It's not unreasonable for the right people. And it's not so much of a gamble with good character.

Hard-hearted people divorce. So don't be a hard-hearted person or marry one.

The idea that more individuals are hard-hearted and foolish at a younger age doesn't mean that there aren't tenderhearted and loyal people at that age who show discretion.



Marriage is a good institution. It's the partners that make it bad, and it's not the age but the mindset. Sure, younger people tend to be more foolish, but there are wise ones, too. More people have to have their hearts broken and be beat up by life before they soften enough for a lasting marriage, but not all people need that.



So I should have had serious, emotionally intimate relationships as a teenager to be more happy as a single young woman at around 17-18? But not enjoy marriage? Interesting perspective.



I realize that you are not an animal, but God gave you an actual need that only someone else can fill. That's the biological imperative and it goes right down to your emotional nature.

I don't need to teach myself to ignore myself. Besides at the same time God brought my soul mate.



So you remind me of an anorexic, controlling a biological imperative to get control and feel less like you have needs.



That's like comparing needful food to alcohol. Marriage isn't an indulgence.



You must hate how the need for food controls you... or you are just suffering cognitive dissonance.



I think you are not perceiving the young correctly. More of them than the older set may do this, but it is a matter of values, not biology. It was not inevitable or else I would have been flirting and dating for years prior to my courtship and engagement.



First we were best friends 3yrs before the crush. So there was an emotional connection back then that formed. Hearts tend to do that around a certain time in life, whether you want it to or not, I found.



It's the hard hearts that cause divorce, 100%.



Say that to my first 4 children's faces. Tell them I would have been better off waiting.

This litany of yours in which you promote your life choices and your rationales as somehow always natural responses to biological imperatives and therefore logically everyone's rationale is flawed.
We are, within a range, quite similar but also quite different and unique.
Marriage, if it is to succeed, requires loyalty, commitment, nurturing, courtesy, consideration for the necessities of each partner whilst keeping in mind the health of the union.
Love is based on mutual attraction but it is sustained and enriched by the developing friendship, trust and generosity which occurs in a solid relationship.
Good marriages may occur under a variety of circumstances.
However, I would counsel young people to get educated, get rewarding employment, let your family get to know your choice of a potential mate and carefully weigh the opinions of those who love you.
That is simply one opinion seasoned by experience.

 

[1PeaceMaker]

Who can't be determined by the people making the choice, which is why most of them fail and it's a bad idea.

Anyone who thinks they can choose a mate without God isn't ready for marriage and they can count on their arrogance to lead to failure.

I prayed and let God literally pick my mate. Like Gideon, I used multiple signs as divine confirmation of approval. I also discussed it at length with elders and spent my youth praying and prepping for marriage with my pursuit of goals.

I was an intellectual, not so much playful, youth. Spent my teen years training to be a missionary and reading up on being a good wife/mother.

I don't agree with your assumption about those whose marriages fail, because their limitations are shared with the fewer who succeed.

What limitations? What are you talking about?

I've met too many good women whose marriages failed because of very bad men.

Abraham's servant chose based on God's leading. He looked for signs and got a worthy mate to bring home for Isaac. Isaac was 40, yet his father sent an even older, wiser man, that he trusted to do the picking. So if I look at the Bible I can see that not only was what I did sound, by going on a spiritual choice; if you consider the Bible, some of us shouldn't be picking even if we are 40! Doesn't mean we shouldn't marry at all, though.

Everyone, prior to the sufficient development of their pre frontal cortex is encumbered by poor judgment, arising more from the areas of the brain that are emotional and less from the areas of the brain suited to actual judgment and are demonstrably subject to poorer impulse control. A cumulative disaster enhanced by a relative lack of life experience.

Unless we are talking marriage while drunk in Vegas, it's not impulse that leads to marriage. It's typically months of courting and counseling. It was for me.

Same with people who eventually divorce... months of struggle and considerations before the knot can be untied.

Young adults do possess intelligence, and you make them sound like biting toddlers.

But instead the problem that leads to their divorce is a hard heart. Maybe not for both parties. But the tenderhearted one should have let God do the picking.

I'll finish my post later... so stay tuned.

.....

And over a half hour later....

What I'm saying is that at 17 or 18 and on for a bit you're capable of enjoying company, of whatever intensity appeals to you, but not likely ready for more. The numbers bear that out and science gives us insight into why.

The Bible and our biology actually points in the other direction. Just like with animals that are bred, humans have a window that it's best to breed by and after that the health and fertility of the breeding stock diminishes.

If the Lord builds the house, do the laborers labor in vain to build it? If the two live in submission to the Lord they will be able to continue in the relationship that was built on love in the first place.

I think you think that because you never grew out of it and into something else, didn't give yourself a chance to experience that... I didn't "need" my wife. I wanted her. Different thing. I appreciated her, desired her, but I didn't need her to complete me. Life was good before her. It's better with her. Life was good with her. It's better with Jack.

To say you don't need your wife is pretty cold. Ever tell her you could be happy and have a good life without her? Or Jack? I don't think it works that way now, and I don't think it worked that way when you married. I don't think it's very nice to say "hey, I'd have a good life without you, but it's better with you here." "I don't need you but I like having you around."

Don't marry a person unless you really need them. They could go on to be with someone who couldn't do without them, and feels that they are completed by becoming that special someone to someone.

Especially since you could easily live your whole life happily alone and others don't do so well. Marriage isn't a little upgrade.

We are creatures of impulse and desires. But we are also something more and that more should rule them. When and to the extent it doesn't we tend to invite misery in ourselves and for others.

Marriage isn't an act of impulse unless you make it that. Most states insist on counseling and a waiting period for their residents to avoid just that.

You sound young to me

Some on this board claim I sound like a 15 year old with no judgment. Those are the same ones who claim the only reason an older man would marry a younger woman is for lust and manipulation of her.

Ironically, this whole thread long we've been acknowledging how women can so easily take their men to the cleaners with the way laws are set up these days.

and you don't seem to understand what I'm saying to you on this point because that isn't it at all. Everyone gets hungry and everyone (or nearly everyone) has the same essential urges. It's what we do with them and how we address them or failing let them rule us that defines us. That's not deprivation, it's maturation.

I used my biological imperative as one point of information but not as the sole point of information. Isaac had a need for companionship and comfort while grieving the loss of his mother so Abraham sent a godly man to go find the right woman to fill that need and make him happy again.

That's not the comparison. I'm noting that a need isn't in and of itself a virtue and sating a compulsion isn't necessarily the road to happiness or the good. In fact, it can be the road to a sort of hell, paved with the best intentions.

The need isn't a virtue but by virtue of that need people are born into this world, even when the marriage fails. I'm so glad that my husband's mother had him even if her young marriage failed while producing him. I don't think that was a bad gamble. It was harder for his mother because she didn't let God choose her mate and they were both, from the sounds of it, a little hard-hearted. God could have totally fixed what was wrong with them.

The numbers and science say I am.

The numbers and science don't point to universal failure. If the numbers and science say most 8 year olds can't swim, do you keep good swimmers out of the water just because they are under 8 or do you just accommodate them like you would an older child who can also swim?

Few things are inevitable, but most things are generally predictable. For instance, most people who get married before their brains are functioning fully will fail in their effort.

Only if a hard heart is involved.

So you think God can send you a mate, but not those same children in a few years more...that's a curious theology.

If God sent me a mate earlier in life, maybe that's because He wants me to have more children. If I fritter away that time with my fertility folded up in a napkin and buried away, so I can be homogenized like the rest of the world, I don't get the same number of kids anymore. I lose a blessing, even if the world doesn't if God gives some other woman what would have been MY kids, my blessing.

 

[1PeaceMaker]

This litany of yours in which you promote your life choices and your rationales as somehow always natural responses to biological imperatives and therefore logically everyone's rationale is flawed.

Your perception of my point is flawed. I'm not arguing that all or even most should marry as young as I did. I did because it was right for me and I'm defending the years of marriage that produced 4 beautiful children and such priceless times for us as a couple. And if my kid wants to marry at 18, and eventually one of them will, I defend their right, too.

We are, within a range, quite similar but also quite different and unique.

Agreed.

Marriage, if it is to succeed, requires loyalty, commitment, nurturing, courtesy, consideration for the necessities of each partner whilst keeping in mind the health of the union.

Agreed.

Love is based on mutual attraction but it is sustained and enriched by the developing friendship, trust and generosity which occurs in a solid relationship.

Which should be founded on God if it will reliably have those qualities.

Good marriages may occur under a variety of circumstances.
However, I would counsel young people to get educated, get rewarding employment, let your family get to know your choice of a potential mate and carefully weigh the opinions of those who love you.
That is simply one opinion seasoned by experience.

Works for me and it's what I did as much as it was in my power to do.

 

[Rusha]

Good marriages may occur under a variety of circumstances. However, I would counsel young people to get educated, get rewarding employment, let your family get to know your choice of a potential mate and carefully weigh the opinions of those who love you.That is simply one opinion seasoned by experience.

That is an opinion we share ... FTR, I would NEVER ever encourage teenagers to marry. Education and employment are stabilizing factors that should be the first consideration prior to marriage.

The term young love would better be described as "young, emotional infatuation".

 

[1PeaceMaker]

That is an opinion we share ... FTR, I would NEVER ever encourage teenagers to marry. Education and employment are stabilizing factors that should be the first consideration prior to marriage.

The term young love would better be described as "young, emotional infatuation".

Divorce is the product of hard hearts. If education and employment influence divorce rates, that is only true among the hard-hearted.

And increasing prosperity only increases divorce rates, just as monetary advantage only increases abortion rates among young women..

 

[1PeaceMaker]

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/janeth...ass-women-are-4-times-as-likely-to-abort.html

 

[Rusha]

Divorce is the product of hard hearts. If education and employment influence divorce rates, that is only true among the hard-hearted.

Divorce is a fact of life ... and can be found in every family unit ... regardless of whether you are a divorcee ... or second wife/husband/sibling/parent/child OF a divorcee,

No need to hasten it along by encouraging teen marriage ...

 

[1PeaceMaker]

An article published by by the Psych Central website indicates that when married women earn an independent income and have access to money of their own, the divorce rate drops as low as 20 percent.

So.... if we were into controlling divorce rates through laws, we would make a law that only women who have an independent income and access to money of their own can marry.

 

[1PeaceMaker]

Divorce is a fact of life ... and can be found in every family unit ... regardless of whether you are a divorcee ... or second wife/husband/sibling/parent/child OF a divorcee,

No need to hasten it along by encouraging teen marriage ...

Not all teens are hard hearted or pick hard hearted spouses. And the ones you can't reach and can't prevent from picking poorly, well, they're hard-hearted, so good luck holding them back, anyway.

 

[Granite]

Divorce is the product of hard hearts. If education and employment influence divorce rates, that is only true among the hard-hearted.

And increasing prosperity only increases divorce rates, just as monetary advantage only increases abortion rates among young women..

Not always. And if having financial independence is so unsettling to you go ahead and stay poor, frankly.