Question for happily married people

[dcasper70]

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I respectfully disagree with your thoughts here.

[/ QUOTE ]I am curious as to what parts you disagree with? Are you saying that working on your emotional state is effective and you know this from personal experience? If so, I would be curious to hear your experiences if you are inclined to share. Also, I would be curious if other things were going on in your life as well and I would be curious as to causation versus correlation.

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FishNChips pretty much summed it up.

C'mon, we're humans! Yeah, genetics plays a big role. I think we can all agree to that. But we can't change our inner feelings/emotional state???
If you're falling back on 'everythings biological, prove me wrong', well, I guess you win. The whole nature/nurture debate is beyond this thread.

IMO, we're emotional beings. Our emotions can seriously affect our relationships. Just as I think our emotional state can be destroyed, I think we can build it up. If you want to consider this a genetic trait, fine, we'll just be looking at different sides of the same coin.

I also believe in God. Do I have to go find a scientific study on that too?

[CarpeDiem]

Most married couples who marry for the first time stay married. It's the 2nd marriages and third marriages that skew the statistics. Those are mostly the same people. So, when someone wrote that most marriages fail, they are sort of right, but the essence of that statement is wrong.

I have been married eleven years. Our jobs forced us to live apart for a while and we did some counseling around this and other issues in our marriage. The counseling was good, by the way, and can only help in my opinion. The counselor had us read John Gottman's book, "The Seven Principles of Making a Marriage Work." What makes this book different from others is that Gottman is a researcher and he uses EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE to make his conclusions.

According to Gottman's research, the number one reasons long-term relationships succeed is a surprise to most people. It's not communication or honesty, though there is an element to that. It's DEALING WITH THE ISSUES YOU AND YOUR SPOUSE WILL NEVER AGREE ON. Seriously! There will be disagreements in any relationship that simply will not be solvable. How does a relationship cope with those? Respectfully, scornfully? Can my wife live with my computer poker lifestyle? Can I live with her worrying? Can she live with my socks on the floor? etc... It's intersting because it's research based.

Anyhow Oreo, I'm sorry about your breakup but encouraged by your self-examination. I read somewhere that you will change those around you the most by working on changing yourself. It's counterintuitive but in the end it makes perfect sense. People don't fundamentally change, but you can try and your significant other will likely appreciate that effort.

Good luck.

[Utah]

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Utah: every time I read one of your posts about marriage/relationships I can't help but feel like I'm nothing more than the dog in your avatar. Seriously, you really believe that we are no more than breeding machines and that the need to survive and breed with the strongest gened partner we can find drives everything we do? Wow.

[/ QUOTE ] Honestly, I don't mean to be argumentative on this. But, to answer your question - Yes. Science and logic dictate this. Why would you think we are anything else? What in science or logic tells us we are more that surviving and breeding machines?

I think that once we accept this our lives are much freer. We understand our reaction to things better. We can shape better social policy. We have better marriages. It can only be a good thing to accept our real nature. Maybe I am wrong. But, let’s at least strive to understand our reality whatever it is  I am an open thinker - give me an alternative theory supported by the evidence and I will be happy to change my mind


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Utah does a disservice by trivializing those points and steering the argument away from those things.

[/ QUOTE ] I didn’t steer the argument away. I address them specifically and said they don’t work. Is the history of marriage not evidence of this? Does one really believe marriage can be solved by comprise, and mutual respect, and the lot? I can’t see how anyone could possibly believe that in the face of the evidence. If it can be solved by those things wouldn’t marriage have a much better success rate? Now, one might say that those things don't work because of a me-me-me society. But, that is the society we live in and until you change society you will not change the attitude.

Can we agree, given the disastrous record of marriage, that something is broken in the model? Can we agree that trying to find comprise and respect and such does not work for the majority of people (for whatever the reason)?

Respectfully, I think it is a disservice to the OP to pitch him a model for marriage success that has shown to be a dismal failure. Would it be a disservice to tell an alcoholic who wants to quit drinking so heavily that his plan to limit himself to one drink at the bar a night is a recipe for failure?

To the point about not being purely instinctual beings that have the true capability to overcome our primal instincts…..well, I tried my only little test on this recently.

I was very hesitant to post this because it will probably not be believed and I will get skewered, but it’s the truth and it is illustrative of my point. I always like to test out ideas myself. So, I picked 2 very happily married women who talked about marriage success in terms of compromise, love, commitment, respect, etc. They were both married for 5+ years and both would proclaim their undying love for their husbands. You would, on the face of it, say these women had as strong of marriage as possible. One woman was a consultant who works for me and the other was a friend for many many years. With Mrs. Utah's permission I wanted to see how far they would go. Note, both husbands were would you would clarify as the perfect husband - supportive, kind, understanding, etc.


My plan was to forget my normal behavior, which is to be the nice caring guy. Instead, I was going to act like the “player”, even though I had never really done so. When I was laid up for a month last year do to a back injury I ended up reading about every article on askmen.com. The jist of everything was to stop being caring and start acting cocky, funny, mysterious, etc. In general, it seemed to say to act in a very disrespectful way to women and to be the guy I really don’t want to be. But, the articles said women instinctually crave it and I was going to test it out.

So, I started treating these women that “askmen” way and my first thought was that they were going to immediately tell me to crawl back into the hole I came from and how dare I act that way because they were married. I was scared to death to say the things I did to them and I felt like I was being an ass and it was uncomfortable at first.

I would make little comments and do little things and see if I would get away with it. I always did. I then started making little sexual overtures and expected to get slammed. I never did. So, I just kept pushing it to see where I would get shut down. But, I was never shut down and the better I got at it the more they responded. The girl at work kept touching me, staring at me, telling me how awesome she thought I was, asking me to lunch, etc. It was obvious what she was thinking. The other women agree to meet me behind he husbands back and she was willing to go away for a weekend with me.

I know one of the girls would sleep with me for sure and I bet the other would too. Either way, they both went WAY over the line of what was acceptable and their husbands would freak if they found out how their wives were behaving.

I have stopped because I don't really want to do anything. Mrs. Utah, who agreed with the experiment at the start, said to me recently, "isn’t that mean to do? To lead them on like that?". My response was - "no, that is how they want to be treated. Just look at the way they reacted. How was I being mean when they would act this way to another man behind their husbands back?"

Think of that, 2 perfectly happily married women were so easily manipulated by their genetic impulses. These were the only 2 i tried with but I bet you that it would work for many. I am not overly good looking and I dont have any special charm. I simply pressed the buttons askmen.com said I should press. If you don’t believe my experiment try it yourself. I guarantee it will work the majority of time.

So, if my theory is wrong then why did these women respond the way they did? Why would they tell you the keys to their happy marriage was respect and compromise and then be so willing to jump into another man's arms? Their husbands were “perfect” and showed respect and compromise yet that didn’t help. Please help me explain the results if I am wrong. I highly doubt that by pure chance I just picked out the worlds 2 biggest hos.

I don't mean to be pessimistic about human nature. To be perfectly honest, I am a dreamer and I want to believe in a world of princes and princesses and fairytales. But man, look at the evidence.

I provide the simple little experiments to test my ideas. Simply run them for yourselves.

[Scary_Tiger]

tl;dr

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Edit: To the guy blaming second and third marriages for skewing the statistics, 40-50% of first marriages end in divorce. This is fairly disastrous. I'd guess quite a few more continue unhappily ever after as well.

[Utah]

I thought your post was interesting and I am going to get the book. Here is a pretty good article on Gottman.

http://archives.his.com/smartmarriag.../msg00014.html

snippet:
The problem, as Gottman acknowledges, is that knowing how marriages work
doesn't necessarily help clinicians--or couples. "In marriages that are
happy and stable, for example, there's a lot of positive affect when
people are resolving conflict. They laugh a lot, they're teasing each
other, they give appreciations of one another, even while they're
fighting," he says. "That's a stable difference between happy and unhappy
couples: It predicts divorce and marital happiness." Unfortunately, he
adds, it's also a useless finding, because it's unteachable: "You can't
take an unhappy couple and say, 'Have more affection and humor while
you're fighting.' People have tried to do that, with all kinds of
methods. They'll say, 'Pretend that you're happily married! Be nice to
each other! Remember, you love each other, right?' 'Well, yeah.' 'Well,
act like it!'" Alienated couples simply can't pick up these skills, says
Gottman, unless they have already built an underlying friendship.


Of course, I found this funny:

One of Gottman's most widely publicized conclusions was also one of his
most widely satirized--the "yes, dear" hypothesis. For a marriage to
work, he concluded, the husband had to be willing to accept the influence
of his wife when it came to working out marital disagreements. Women,
whatever their other problems in relationships, had little trouble
allowing themselves to be swayed by their spouses, but men sometimes did,
and male recalcitrance doomed a relationship to disintegration. Although
the conclusion might seem innocuous, the press ran with it, and Gottman
was mocked everywhere from the Dallas Morning News editorial page to
Saturday Night Live for seeming to advocate a mass pussy-whipping of the
male population.

[dcasper70]

I guess a well formed scientific study of such a sample size cannot be contradicted.


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So, if my theory is wrong then why did these women respond the way they did?

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Because they're lying shallow whores??? Just a thought...

Edit: [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[Utah]

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guess a well formed scientific study of such a sample size cannot be contradicted.

[/ QUOTE ]I never said it was a well formed scientific study. I said it was a little experiment and one should be careful to draw any real conclusions. Yet, I found the results interesting and I was shocked at how well it worked.

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Because they're lying shallow whores??? Just a thought..

[/ QUOTE ]Maybe. But then again, maybe not.

[dandy_don]

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I wish I could read these threads and come away with the idea that I really want to get married.

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Marriage is not for everyone.

I've been married 14 years now and intend to be with the same woman until I'm gone from this place. The only "secret" to making it this long that I can lay claim goes back to before making the decision to get married that "divorce was never an option" (except under extreme circumstances). By setting that as the standard, you can work through anything. Since none of our disagreements enter divorce as the ultimate option of possible outcomes, it has never headed in that direction. If divorce "is" an option for something less than an extreme situation, then it can often resonate in some of the arguments you may have with your spouse.

Is my wife the only person that could make me happy? Probably not, but I realize I have a good thing and I don't want to screw it up. I enjoy going home each night to my wife and kids--they need me and I need them.

Also, a "happy marriage" does not mean that there are not disagreements and unpleasant times. Many people say that the happiest times of the lives were the first couple of years they were married; I've always said that I'd never go through the first couple of years of my marriage again. Getting adjusted from a free swinging bachelor (selfish, self-centered individual) to a person with obligations and commitments was a difficult adjustment that took a while to get through.

I hope this helps.

dandy

[ripdog]

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Who's the longest married in OOT, I wonder? I'll be 17 yrs in 4 monrths.

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I've been married to her for almost 9 years, we started dating around this date in 1984.

[vulturesrow]

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Who's the longest married in OOT, I wonder? I'll be 17 yrs in 4 monrths.

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I've been married to her for almost 9 years, we started dating around this date in 1984.

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8 years in June for me. 4 daughter is due the day before our anniversary. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]