Relationship? Married? If so, why?

How to pass, fit in, eventually set an example, and ultimately lead the way.
henrik
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Re: Relationship? Married? If so, why?

Post by henrik »

arrrrgon wrote:I don't think you've been in love yet if you feel this way. Many people mistake liking someone a lot as love. Many people mistake lust for love. But when you truly love someone your life is never the same without them.
Please don't take that as an attack at all, but I believe you'll know the difference some day.
Ok, I'm not that young either! :)

arrrrgon
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Re: Relationship? Married? If so, why?

Post by arrrrgon »

henrik wrote:Ok, I'm not that young either! :)
Maybe I'm just a hopeless romantic :-P

7Wannabe5
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Re: Relationship? Married? If so, why?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Chad said: For a half second I was very intrigued by "the Rule of Three" for relationships.
Of course there is an obvious way to apply the rule if you are an aspirational polygamist but that would likely prove to be very expensive in the modern market. I am more scared-straight than cynical on the topic of til-death-do-you-part-sexual-contract. In the last year, I have been weekend house-guest with 5 different middle-aged couples who have sex-dead marriages in which they are stranded or locked due to sunk-cost-fallacy. Usually it is the wife who calls it quits on sex (4 of the couples I visited) , sometimes it is mutual and both parties are content with the situation (1 of the couples I visited) but more often than you might think it is the husband who shuts down shop (my own first marriage.) Therefore, I often have empathy for the husband's situation. I even have empathy for my current SO's fears that he may put himself in financial risk if he legally marries me even though this requires me to imagine a future version of myself who has fallen madly in love and under the dark, dominant spell of a highly skilled divorce attorney.

Anyways, I do now know the Rule of 3 Practices for insuring steady supply of high quality sex. Long term legal contract is neither necessary nor sufficient.

CreoleBelle
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Re: Relationship? Married? If so, why?

Post by CreoleBelle »

Hubs and I didn't feel the need to get married until considering certain practical benefits for us:

- As a married couple we can stay together in the same country more easily. (As expats, our residence permits are tied to the job, and contracts in our field are precarious.)
- Various rights and responsibilities of being & having a spouse, e.g. health insurance, etc. And he is the one I trust and care about the most in my life so I want him as my legal next of kin, to make decisions about me if I'm in hospitalized, for example. Things are easier to facilitate when the other person has the right to manage it.

Also, the tax benefits/drawbacks of marriage haven't affected us, perhaps due to our type of work. And we resolved financial concerns by keeping our finances separate and having a pre-nup.

Noided

Re: Relationship? Married? If so, why?

Post by Noided »

What you are saying could be done without a legal contract. Joining finances and marriage are two different topics.

Since starting this topic I actually changed my position on marriage to "eww, gross" to "hum, maybe I should be a cinic and just roll with it if the advantages are superior to the disadvantages". However, joint finances is almost out of the question. I would only consider that If I had a very big cushion in my financial nest egg.

TopHatFox
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Re: Relationship? Married? If so, why?

Post by TopHatFox »

Hm, I don't want to get married or join finances. I am also polyamorous/open, so I don't know how that would work legally in any case since American legal code is inequitably biased to monogamy.

My intention is to enjoy the company of my partner while she's around, but I remind myself that we could ultimately separate, and that that's okay. This reminds me to appreciate our relationship more, and to not take it for granted. Having other partners, or even the possibility to explore potential partners, also reminds how unique and fulfilling my relationship is. (:

I don't think adding a legal contract would do much to our relationship aside from the unnecessary legal bond and possible tax benefits. We also don't plan on children, or joining finances. Aside from paying rent together or saving up for mutual adventures together, most financial topics are discussed on a per topic basis.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Relationship? Married? If so, why?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I wonder if polyamory is the choice most coherent with ERE or perma-culture due to web structure? Celibacy would be another obvious consideration because maybe in alignment with stoic philosophy? Superficially, conventional marriage resembles conventional career and would therefore seem to be incoherent except maybe on the basis of buy to keep rather than dispose or drive it for life?

I've never been polyamorous but I did have a domestic platonic relationship with one man while having a romantic sexual relationship with another man for a couple years. I didn't make the most of the situation because I was wanting the romantic sexual relationship to become a domestic relationship but in retrospect, if I had been primarily focused on achieving ERE at the time, it might have been the best of both worlds. My DD23 currently has a similar arrangement. Of course, the only reason a platonic male housemate is a more frugal choice than a platonic female housemate is due to division of labor along stereotypical sexist lines. For instance, my platonic male housemate had carpentry skills so he built shelves and a loft for me and gave me cash for groceries that I cooked for both of us. My D23 even shared a room and a bed with her platonic male housemate which goes more than a bit beyond my comfort or comprehension level but it was a frugal choice.

Peanut
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Re: Relationship? Married? If so, why?

Post by Peanut »

It may be right for some, but all the polyamorous relationships I know of have not lasted more than a few years, if that. They appear inherently unstable.

--Were these platonic male friends gay? If not I can't imagine that either one of these arrangements is tenable long term. I would never share a bed with a straight man I didn't intend to sleep with. Sorry, but doing otherwise seems like a horrible idea for all involved.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Relationship? Married? If so, why?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Peanut said:--Were these platonic male friends gay? If not I can't imagine that either one of these arrangements is tenable long term. I would never share a bed with a straight man I didn't intend to sleep with. Sorry, but doing otherwise seems like a horrible idea for all involved.
I think my DD23's platonic male housemate might be gay. My housemate wasn't gay but he was dating a much younger woman and I was dating a much older man at the time so there was some kind of odd balance. He had also previously dated one of my sisters so taboo.

TopHatFox
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Re: Relationship? Married? If so, why?

Post by TopHatFox »

Peanut wrote:It may be right for some, but all the polyamorous relationships I know of have not lasted more than a few years, if that. They appear inherently unstable.
With a divorce rate greater than 40%, I could say the same about monogamous marriage--with statistical evidence. :P

7Wannabe5
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Re: Relationship? Married? If so, why?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Zalo said: With a divorce rate greater than 40%, I could say the same about monogamous marriage--with statistical evidence. :P
Right. There is also the genetic evidence of widespread practice of sexual polygamy by humans to take into account and then reconcile with the freedom and economic equality females now experience thanks to modern birth control and other inventions that make upper body strength less of an asset. Of course, in my generation it was still less acceptable for a female to be a "slut" than a male so the practice of polyamory would have a greater social cost for any female partner to it which would be one possible factor causing instability. Has this significantly changed in today's youth culture in American? It is my understanding that men still tend towards lying up and women still tend towards lying down on sexual survey questions about number of partners but the proportion of men vs. women who currently have multiple partners is becoming more even. IOW, given the fact that every heterosexual encounter must necessarily have a man and a woman engaged, it seems to becoming less the fact that a few women are having sex with a great many men. IOW, a modern graph with virgin at the origin and whore at the extreme would be much smoother than 100 years ago.

Peanut
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Re: Relationship? Married? If so, why?

Post by Peanut »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
I think my DD23's platonic male housemate might be gay. My housemate wasn't gay but he was dating a much younger woman and I was dating a much older man at the time so there was some kind of odd balance. He had also previously dated one of my sisters so taboo.
Aha. Well, carry on then!
Zalo wrote:
Peanut wrote:It may be right for some, but all the polyamorous relationships I know of have not lasted more than a few years, if that. They appear inherently unstable.
With a divorce rate greater than 40%, I could say the same about monogamous marriage--with statistical evidence. :P
Except your statistic is wrong.

Peanut
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Re: Relationship? Married? If so, why?

Post by Peanut »

7Wannabe5 wrote: Right. There is also the genetic evidence of widespread practice of sexual polygamy by humans to take into account and then reconcile with the freedom and economic equality females now experience thanks to modern birth control and other inventions that make upper body strength less of an asset. Of course, in my generation it was still less acceptable for a female to be a "slut" than a male so the practice of polyamory would have a greater social cost for any female partner to it which would be one possible factor causing instability. Has this significantly changed in today's youth culture in American? It is my understanding that men still tend towards lying up and women still tend towards lying down on sexual survey questions about number of partners but the proportion of men vs. women who currently have multiple partners is becoming more even. IOW, given the fact that every heterosexual encounter must necessarily have a man and a woman engaged, it seems to becoming less the fact that a few women are having sex with a great many men. IOW, a modern graph with virgin at the origin and whore at the extreme would be much smoother than 100 years ago.
It's my understanding that polyamory isn't about an open relationship but a stable quad or whatever of individuals romantically involved in various configurations. So swingers, cuckolds, etc., do not belong to this group, and the women in polyamorous arrangements are not likely to be slut-shamed, or at least not in the same way as single women with multiple partners. Typically all of the aforementioned arrangements are kept fairly private to boot.

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Ego
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Re: Relationship? Married? If so, why?

Post by Ego »

Here's an interesting take, contrasting relationships with ambition.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archi ... on/275025/
Kasser, the author of The High Price of Materialism, has shown that the pursuit of materialistic values like money, possessions, and social status-the fruits of career successes-leads to lower well-being and more distress in individuals. It is also damaging to relationships: "My colleagues and I have found," Kasser writes, "that when people believe materialistic values are important, they...have poorer interpersonal relationships [and] contribute less to the community." Such people are also more likely to objectify others, using them as means to achieve their own goals.

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GandK
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Re: Relationship? Married? If so, why?

Post by GandK »

@Ego: great article.

It always surprises me when people (non-Idealists?) assume that growth means external achievement. People on their deathbed do not wish they had learned more things, built/bought more widgets or received more accolades. They wish they had loved more, or had loved better, when they had the chance.

Edited to add: The Top 5 Regrets Of The Dying

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Ego
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Re: Relationship? Married? If so, why?

Post by Ego »

@Gandk, it's funny how that is one of those things I've got to relearn over and over again.

enigmaT120
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Re: Relationship? Married? If so, why?

Post by enigmaT120 »

I expect I'll be wishing I wasn't dying.

Dragline
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Re: Relationship? Married? If so, why?

Post by Dragline »

Not allowed -- that's akin to asking the genie for more wishes. :D

Von Paulus
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Re: Relationship? Married? If so, why?

Post by Von Paulus »

Living in Holland and married for 18 years now.
We share our incomes,no problem,the magic word is Thrust.
She is clearly my better half,as the saying goes.
Best decision i ever made.

Noided

Re: Relationship? Married? If so, why?

Post by Noided »

Von Paulus wrote: The magic word is Thrust
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=thrust

Sorry, couldn't resist :)

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