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0 pointssalmo3y ago0 comments

The 1 in 100 is what keeps my wife busy with family law. The odds of ending up marrying someone vs having a healthy relationship are 2 very different things.

My wife and I dated through undergrad, broke up at "get married or break up." And ended coming back together as adults with more life and relationship experience. Based on plans, we never should have been back in the same city. And when we started hanging out again, neither expected a relationship, just a friendship still being sick of each others' sh. But we had both grown up. We're 24 years into our relationship now. I think it's going well.

That's all purely anecdotal, though.

I don't think real math could be done with this. Success isn't measurable. People often split due to $ or tragedy. People stick it out, miserable the entire time. It walks into Aristotle's eudaimonia. You can't know until it's over. Even then, quantifying quality is folly.

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Dracophoenix3y ago· 3 in thread

I'm guessing your wife is a divorce attorney? If so, knowing what she knows, what's stopping her dropping out of the marriage and taking half your stuff? Even in a perfect marriage, there's always the incentive.

salmoOP3y ago

No, she does general practice. That includes family law, but not dedicated.

It would be an equitable portion of our collective stuff, not 1/2 of mine. There is no “yours” when you’re married. That’s a big part of what marriage means. Even pre-modern and across many cultures, marriage has been viewed as a contract.

Money (or lack thereof) is one of the primary motivators in her experience. A lot of “rich people” get divorces when they’re in debt up to their eyeballs and the consequences hit.

We’re not struggling, not wealthy, and are pretty equally valued. Also, there’s more than stuff. The burden of children, a household, and even our own lives would be much greater solo. We’re a pretty great support system for each other.

There is no perfect marriage. Part of my point. I think mine’s great. We’ll see when we’re dead or divorced.

tomerv3y ago

The incentive to do what exactly? Break up a good marriage to get half of the common assets (minus many many expenses)? How is that better in any way?

Dracophoenix3y ago

A "good marriage" isn't guaranteed to be a desirable one past the wedding day. I am in no way suggesting GP's marriage is a ticking time bomb, but I've read enough stories on Reddit and elsewhere to know there's no such thing as a guaranteed marriage even if you do everything right. My expectation is that GP's or his spouse might possess insight.

People who's marriages I thought would go on till death (Bezos's, Gates's, Carmack's, and most recently Tom Brady's) can have the scales tipped into the direction of "leave for reason X and take what you can from him (and sometimes her) on the way out", whether out of vindictiveness or perceived entitlement, even if the money wasn't the primary cause or objective.

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