Podcast: Play in new window | Download
DISCOVER HOW SMART, STRONG & SUCCESSFUL WOMEN (THAT'S YOU!) CAN FINALLY Find Your Man
Take this short quiz
to discover what you need to do now.
If your parents were divorced…If they stayed together for fifty years while fighting miserably…If you were divorced after a long marriage…You’re bound to have negative associations with marriage. For you, marriage means pain, angst, misunderstandings, silent treatments, and the endless drudgery of compromise and housework. I hear you. But if that’s all that marriage was, there wouldn’t be 100 million married people in America. On this Love U Podcast, I’m going to explain why marriage – a good marriage – is worth it.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
Hi Evan,
I really don’t know a couple who is happily married.
I know married people who complain a lot, divorced people who still talk about how awful their marriages were and people who blame their partners for the demise of their marriages. As you can imagine, this is very disheartening. I’m feeling that putting my effort into finding”the one”, is futile. That it just does not exist. I feel any effort I put into action will only end in disappointment.
Sadly, everyone I know says they’d never remarry if single again. My fiancé backed out of our wedding last October, traumatized from two divorces and troubled dependent adult children. It hurts that he married the mother of his children, an alcoholic who ultimately left for one of her boyfriends…but not me. Still he treats me far better than men before him who said I’m too short, fat and ugly. Or chose a vice over me. Or screamed at me in public. At least I have a loving boyfriend and we can spend every night together even if living in separate houses. I think divorce would be the ultimate heartbreak for me. Sometimes not getting what you want is the best thing. Most of Evans clients are higher class with degrees and good jobs so they’re not going to have the same kinds of problems. Marriage is most successful for upper class and rare for low class. I’m under 4 foot nine, obese and work 3 physical jobs. There’s something to be said for counting your blessings instead of focusing on the negatives.
This was a problem for me, as my parents are have chosen to stay in a toxic marriage for 40+ years. Due to that I identified more with unhappy couples and the children of unhappy couples and ended up befriending such people. Evan’s products definitely helped me make better choices, but so did developing friendships with happily married people. This is not to say that you should dump your single friends if you want to get married, but as in any endeavor you should take advice from people who have succeeded at that goal. And I’m not saying that single people are “failures”. I’m an employee of a company rather than a business owner and I’m successful in many ways. But if a friend wanted to start a business and asked me for advice I’d tell them to ask an entrepreneur, not me.
I would remarry if it were the right person, but having been single for 17 years, it’s a major proposition. I’d have to know I could handle someone in my space.
Kitty,
“This is not to say that you should dump your single friends if you want to get married, but as in any endeavor you should take advice from people who have succeeded at that goal.”
But how much romantic advice do you give to your single friends? I find that most women just want you to listen. I have a friend who hates her boyfriend one weekend and is never going to talk to him again and then spends the following weekend with him. I never say much about it other than I hope she finds someone who treats her better. But there’s nothing I could say that she doesn’t already know. As a friend, my job isn’t really to give advice but to be supportive and listen to the venting. 🙂
Emily,
I think friends giving each other dating and relationship advice is more common among younger women (I’m 40). Personally I have a hard and fast rule of not giving unsolicited advice since I hate getting it. And in my experience people who most need advice and guidance are too proud to ask for it.
A lawyer wrote this list of marriage’s legal benefits.
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/marriage-rights-benefits-30190.html
Of course it is only relevant if you have a compatible relationship wherein there is mutual love and the desire for a lifelong commitment.
I am of the personal belief that if a couple cannot remain together sans legal marriage, the only thing that will be holding them together will be legal marriage. The pain of dissolving a marriage is what makes people miserable. The pain of remaining together has to become greater than the pain of divorce, and it can take a long time for couples to reach this point.
Divorce is emotional from the point of admitting that one failed. However, everyone who has experienced a failed long-term relationship has endured this experience. They real challenge with divorce is that it is a legal contract that must be broken and that is bounded by state and federal rules here in the United States. First, there is the division of assets. Even in divorces where the desire to divorce is mutual, one partner often believes that he/she deserves a larger slice of the pie. Remaining civil during the division of assets is important to keeping divorce drama low. The major hurdle, especially if one is a man, occurs if a couple has minor children in common. Men receive the short end of the stick on this one due to heavy gender bias in family court. While some women agree to joint physical custody, that situation occurs far less than sole physical custody awarded to the ex-wife. Going from being an active father to being turned into merely a source of income and an every other weekend dad is something that often scars men for life. It is difficult for many men to accept that their children spend more time with their ex-wife’s boyfriend than they do with them. Sadly, a lot of men never get over this pain.
At this point in my life, I am not saying that I will never marry again, but I do not see any benefit to marriage. My children are adults in college. I will be retiring comfortably in a few years. I am with a woman that will be retiring comfortably in a few years who has no desire to remarry. We have been together for over two and a half years and have been cohabitating for over a year. I am glad that we took this approach because the last year has been challenging. Between COVID (she is an executive-level medical professional), losing both of her parents, and one of her daughters experiencing marital problems, our relationship has been put to the test. Had I been tested this way with my ex-wife, we would have never married.
In the end, the desire to marry is personal and should not be taken lightly. Marriage in concept is one thing. Marriage in real life is a completely different thing. Limerence can be a beautiful thing, but one should never marry or commit to marriage while one is still in limerence. It is only after that flood of feel-good chemical compounds subsides that one experiences the true person. Anyone who has been paired with a front-line medical professional this year has had his/her relationship pushed to the brink. If anything, it has taught him/her the value of being able to give to someone who has nothing left to give.