Kids! Now that's something people should have to take exhaustive tests for...
Agreed.
The problem with that is what happens if you fail those tests? Do they take your ovaries and testicles away from you?
What if they don't, you failed and you get pregnant or your loved one becomes pregnant?
Are they going to force you to give it up for adoption or have an abortion?
How much are they going to charge you to take this test and to process it? (You know they'll find an excuse to charge you up the wa-zoo)
How is it hard? When I got married, we got the license, had to wait like 3 days and then went to City Hall. Easiest thing to do.
While that was what we were going to do, based on our situation it wasn't practical or respectful for our families, since we were just thinking of doing that and then telling everybody after the fact. But since my wife's family is halfway around the world, and I'd be the first in my generation to get married, and my wife was her family's only daughter.... we sorta had to make it a bit more then just a court.
Personally speaking, I feel people who want to make getting married harder or to put people through tests for basic things in our lives like having children, etc. are basing their views on an emotional response to something that occured in their personal lives.
I don't mean to be offensive, but just because your brother and my parents (and others in similar situations) made some "bad decisions" in their lives to make them wind up being divorced, why should everybody else have to suffer or be dragged through more complicated tests and bureaucracies due to their own personal issues?
It's not everybody else's fault, or the system's fault that your brother married who he married..... it's his own. And while my parents were pretty well forced into marriage in the 70's by their parents via a pregnancy (and being the thing to do back then) it still all boiled down to their actions, their decisions and their responsibility.
I don't see why everybody else has to go through rings of fire to get married just because your brother and a few others in the world made bad decisions and don't like the position they're currently in. If other people make bad decisions as well and end up being divorced, then those are the consequences..... and they're the exact same consequences I accept for my own actions of getting married.
I certainly do not expect to get divorced (i imagine most who get married don't) but if it does happen, I have nobody else to blame but myself.... certainly not my family or her family, not my friend, and certainly not the system that allowed us to get married.
EXACTLY. That's why I feel like it's harder, it takes more time then people will actually have to sit and think about these things, maybe even answer them.
Yes but forcing people to take tests and have some second party determine if you and your partner should be married isn't the right answer. Way too many problems can arise from such a system..... and can you imagine such a system back in the early 80's or even earlier? You could have ended up having people reject your marriage request because you're gay, your partner is of a different race, and so on.
In my view, it has to start with the parents teaching their children how to approach this in the right way and when their children get older and closer to the point where they can marry or wish to, they should be obligated to understand these things and understand what consequences may occur.
It seems to me that you just want to move the pain in the arse situation of a divorce to the begining of the relationship to when one get's married, which I imagine would greatly reduce the amount of people getting married to one another, but for all the wrong reasons.
I think the easiest solution for everybody is that during the wedding, it is pointed out along with the better/worse speech, that divorces are a real factor in a marriage if they go the wrong way and you'll both go through a living hell unless you are certain this is the right decision.
Other then that, I would say anything else would be way too intrusive to one's personal rights as an individual, as an adult who should be capable of making their own decisions.
Agreed. Though, the first year is going to be hard on the kids I think.
It certainly will be.... afterwards it did get a bit easier, mainly because everybody involved kinda gets used to the routine and the shouting and fighting/stress does reduce..... the begining of a divorce is pretty much a shoke to everyone, including those who made the decision. Making the decision of getting a divorce may not be the easiest thing to do in life, but actually going through one is even worse then the decision itself.
But they will be fine and they will go on with their lives, and after the divorce is all said and done, things usually get a lot better for everybody involved.
The last couple in my family to get a divorce was my aunt and uncle who have one child, of course my cousin. He was younger then I when they went through one, and the reasons for the divorce were a lot more different, where that ex-aunt of mine (whom I never liked for as long as I can remember) cheated on my uncle with some "black guy from Jamaica who she fled off to Toronto with" whom my damn Uncle bent over backwards for that skank more then he should have over the years.
But I think him seeing what my father went through in his divorce had allowed him to deal with the situation very well in my opinion.... I mean if I was him and my wife ditched me and my son for some guy she met in another country while all of us were on vacation, with just a letter telling us what the hell happened..... I dunno...... I'd be pretty pissed to say the least.
I've been cheated on before in the past, so I know how it feels to be that person taken advantage of..... but being married and something like that happening? Whole different ball game.
Me? No. I'm very happily married and happy to be married. I'm not sure about my brother, the only thing I've heard him say is "pre-nup."
Fair enough, it was just a loose observation.
My now wife and I did talk, quite a bit. In part one of the reasons we went over and over was she was immigrating and we didn't want people to think we got married so she could stay.
I know that situation, as my wife's from another country.... but since we're eventually going to move to her home country and while I may have many more job opportunities there then here, I feel some may feel this was our intention as well, which it certainly wasn't.
After awhile, we realized that was sorta bunk, who cares what people think, but, it did make us really examine why we would want to be married and what we would miss if we didn't.
Agreed. It shouldn't matter what other's think about your relationship, but if what you suspect they are thinking seems to be in your mind a lot, perhaps it's more about what you're thinking about the relationship then what they're thinking. Are those reasons true, etc.?
But at the same time, I believe friend/family's views on your relationship do hold a
bit of validity. Afterall, it was my friends and most of my family who kept telling me my first serious relationship was wrong and that "I could do so much better" ~ I didn't listen to them being a young whipper snapper, thinking they don't understand the whole situation or her as I do...... only to find out that they did, as she eventually cheated on me at lest once that I am aware of and continually used me/took advantage of me on a number of occasions. But I was young & ignorant at the time and felt this was how relationships worked (before being cheated on of course) because my parent's relationship wasn't the best either.
To me, my (older) brother was young when he got married (25), at 25 I was just figuring out who I was. I got married at 31, and very happy I sorta knew who I was alone, and now I can figure out who I am with my wife.
Sounds familiar to a degree.... I'm 29 and my wife is 30.... I'm the youngest in my immediate family, where my brother is 31 and my sister, who has triplets, 33 are not married and I feel they took a lot out of our parent's and other family member's relationships to not just rush in because it's the popular thing to do.
Both my wife and I spent half a year talking to one another over the internet before she came here and we agreed that when she did come here, there wouldn't be any expectations of a relationship and we'd just start off as friends/room mates in case we seem different in person then online. We pretty much hit it off the first day she arrived, lived with each other for almost two years before we married and have had no fights yet...... there were a few debates over a few things, but nothing I would call a fight, there were never any insults tossed, nobody came at each other with blunt objects, haven't shouted at one another.... so far so good.
I mean my relationship with my first serious girlfriend lasted just over 3 years, and unfortunatly lived with her for almost an additional year due to an apartment lease and either of us having very little money.
My second serious relationship lasted a little over four years.
This relationship wasn't very long in growth before we decided to get married compared to the others, mainly because I see a dating/long term relationship as a trial basis of trying to work out all the issues that may arise in a relationship and until those issues are resolved, there will never be any suggestion of marriage. I changed a lot for those other girls in the past relationships, while they changed very little and pretty well took advantage of me (i'm just too much of a nice guy, what can I say?)
And after two-three years of no change on their part, obviously they never would, so why offer them a marriage in the hopes they'd change afterwards?
I learned a lot of "What not to do" in those relationships, and when my wife and I entered this one, we both had a decent level of experience in what we're looking for and both have gone through a lot of crap in past relationship to know not to beat around the bush anymore. When we started dating, we both found that there was very little we had to work on, we didn't fight, I wasn't pushing her to change and neither was she on I, thus after a little over a year, on christmas day, I proposed and the rest is history.
Upon reflection when typing all of this, I think perhaps the logical solution would be to change the minimum age for marriage of 18 (I think that's the minimum) to something like 30 years of age.
Why?
Because like how your teen years and before are all about learning and gaining experience, your 20's are more of the same where you're learning and gaining experience of real life, gaining your independance, learning who you are, what you like and don't like, what career you wish to follow, what you're looking for in a relationship, etc.....
Jumping right into a marriage in say your early 20's or late teens and starting a family before you even had time to figure out who you are and where you fit in the world only complicates things and imo could add regret to such a relationship when you hit your 30's or older...... afterall, you just spent your 20's maintaining a family, you missed out on dating other people, figuring out more of what you like in the world, what your interests are, and if the relationship goes down hill just a little bit at some point, resentment for the other person could be a big factor and you could end up blaming them for wasting your youth, etc..... when you had an equal role in the situation.
If people got married much later in life, like you and I did (ie: towards your 30's not early 20's) we'd probably see a lot less divorces and more happy families..... but we all know some religious people wouldn't agree to this limitation.
