Post: #51

I suspect a lot of the failure of the Western Marriage Institution has to do with marrying for love.

Love doesn't mean she's a good mom.
Love doesn't mean her family is good and will stick it through.
Love doesn't mean she's in it for the long haul.
Love doesn't mean you're magically ready for all the things that come with having a family.

I know that not everything can be boiled down to making rational choices. I'm not that naive, but it would seem to me that marrying strictly because you love someone is sort of silly. I hope that doesn't come across as strange, but it's almost a non-sequitur to me:

"I'm getting married because I love her."

She might be a wonderful person, but you really can't base big, life-changing decisions on love alone.

Post: #52

(10-29-2017 11:21 PM)Fortis Wrote:  I suspect a lot of the failure of the Western Marriage Institution has to do with marrying for love.

Love doesn't mean she's a good mom.
Love doesn't mean her family is good and will stick it through.
Love doesn't mean she's in it for the long haul.
Love doesn't mean you're magically ready for all the things that come with having a family.

I know that not everything can be boiled down to making rational choices. I'm not that naive, but it would seem to me that marrying strictly because you love someone is sort of silly. I hope that doesn't come across as strange, but it's almost a non-sequitur to me:

"I'm getting married because I love her."

She might be a wonderful person, but you really can't base big, life-changing decisions on love alone.

This is true and exactly why hollywood types of drama are so full of shit. They are essentially training people to think that 'falling in love' is the goal. What they always fail to show is what happens a year or more later when that feeling of love becomes a feeling of "now what?".

I have felt both, love from a place of anxiety and love from a place of respect. With respect, its because I have put the time and the work in and it has been mutually reciprocated. But marriage is hard work. There are any number of things that can go wrong, but in matters of divorce (with kids) I am still convinced that people, and women in particular, are stuck in a fools game chasing a fantasy that literally pours into their pockets 24hrs a day, and this ruins a woman's feeling of contentment.

Post: #53

I'm wary of love, it has been the central subject of most of mankind's creative output since the dawn of history but not even the most poetical and passionate description can truly convey what it is until it has been experienced.
I would also fail in attempting to describe it, but there is something about having been long enough with a person, when you both know how each other's farts smell and what glaring imperfections make up each other but can still look at each other's faces and experiment a pleasant sensation of reciprocal affection and respect that is sublime in its simplicity and objective irrelevance.
Then again, should this fade, as it very likely could,the pain would be tremendous...
But wouldn't we be all poorer for having never known it?

Post: #54

Love is another confused term in the west, packaged and sold as described above. It really means a whole bunch of things all at once, but mostly it means sacrifice: something materialist westerners who are self centered aren't particularly good at. Thus, what we see.

Post: #55

(10-30-2017 01:22 PM)Kid Twist Wrote:  but mostly it means sacrifice

That is one of the best approximations I've known to-date!!!!

Post: #56

The issue that the west has with love vs real life is a simple matter of having put individual rights and that dreaded word--"agency"--on a pedestal. Who you marry is up to your feelings (well actually your wife's feelings) rather than economic or psychological sense. In any functioning dynamic the man should learn some skill that ensures his income, then hang out with a few girls and see which ones are interested in him. Then he should audit her and her family, consult his parents and elders on whether their personalities and lifestyles are compatible, and then decide whether to marry her. If they carried out these steps properly, and assuming the people they consulted had their best interests at heart, chances are that even if they didn't love each other at first they will develop love over time if only out of practical necessity. If they're lucky they might even really understand each other; if not, then at least they can get along without major conflict while still enjoying the securities and basic comforts of marriage.

This process is fundamentally unromantic but it is simple and I have seen it work many times. On the other hand I have seen tons of couples that were totally head-over-heels in love with each other fall apart and end in tears once reality--usually it manifests in laughably mundane personal habits and small quirks--hits home.

Post: #57

Quote:but mostly it means sacrifice

Depends on what that means.

Sacrifice is giving up something you value for a negative, nothing or something of a lesser value. If you are talking about a marriage, the wife might sacrifice her career to move for her husband's job, which brings in more money. Taken in itself that could be called a sacrifice. But in the context of the marriage it's a compromise. The wife wanted her job, her husband to have his job and to remain in the marriage, but she could only have three and it made sense to select as she did based on what she valued. She exchanged one thing she valued to keep two things she might loose - essentially a selfish move. If she happened to value her own career more than her marriage and husband, she would have chosen that and walked away from the marriage.

A marriage can only be sustained by each partner providing more value to each other than the value they see in ending the relationship.

This is why the "romantic love" relationships that have been mentioned break down. They were built on the foundation of valuing the ecstatic feeling that comes with romantic relationships. On one level it's a love of changes in body chemistry. But those changes are not sustainable and once that value dissipates, as it always will, the relationship may not have enough value to sustain itself.

Post: #58

(10-30-2017 01:25 PM)Elster Wrote:  

(10-30-2017 01:22 PM)Kid Twist Wrote:  but mostly it means sacrifice

That is one of the best approximations I've known to-date!!!!

Read my other posts if you don't know why

It's actually part of the reality built into the universe

Post: #59

Investment bro that's the dream. The question is when you are 40+ can you continue this indefinitely? I've has 3 It's tough to find women that are open to this, unless in SEA, an even then you probably just gotta lie to them.