Getting married is not the easy path. We've been married for 42 years and it takes work, sacrifice, a lot of communication and cooperation (and date nights/trips away) to pull it off -- but there's nothing that compares to the fulfillment of knowing you have each other through thick and thin, and children around you to buoy you up. A successful marriage will rub selfishness off your soul, and in return is joy and peace that is out of this world.
Just a word about “women file for divorce more than men.” There is a reason for that. Men generally think the status quo is fine and won’t listen when told it isn’t. My situation was that my husband moved out to be with his girlfriend but would not sign the divorce papers, probably so he could tell said girlfriend that his Evil Wife would not give him a divorce. I pushed the issue, so yes, this Evil Woman filed for divorce (helped along when Saintly Girlfriend got pregnant).
Articles like this are essentially useless. If you aren't willing to address the issues that discourage marriage and encourage divorce, why comment at all? It's pretty clear women are over it -- that is, doing the bulk of domestic labor regardless of employment. Who wouldn't rather be single than live with a man child and constant resentment? Bring back Home Ec and make it mandatory for all high school graduates. And while you're at it, bring back Shop and make it too mandatory. If you want people to have more babies, tackle falling sperm counts, paid parental leave, daycare costs, etc. Else, shut up.
That "Stably married men heading toward retirement have a staggering 10 times more assets than their divorced or never-married male peers" has a lot to do with the well researched fact that women looking for a mate have a strong preference for men with good paying jobs or large financial resources, and I've seen several women divorce their formerly well off husbands when they lost their money.
So many young people turn away from a lifetime commitment or say things like “I don’t need a piece of paper to love someone”.
Three years ago, my wife and I were celebrating our 35th Anniversary, and our waitress was an educated and very impressive woman who was hoping her boyfriend would be accepted at a top b-school. This was supposed to be a magic gate, after which they would commit to each other. She was around 30. I urged her to move things along and said that time waits for no one.
Just months after our 36th Anniversary, my wife passed away following an illness that stalked us for three years. We knew that night on the 35th that we might have only a year or two left.
Would we have jumped into marriage if we knew the terrible end we would face? I would like to say “absolutely”. From this vantage point, looking back with only memories and an ache from her absence, I know fully now just how much I loved her and she me.
We never would have experienced the depth of grief and loss had we never taken the plunge. For that, I am grateful at a profound level. She is still very much a part of me and always will be. We met on a blind date in NYC after college. I only wish I had known her when we were children.
He needs to show his work. Where are the actual data and study parameters supporting his claims? I'm *not* ideologically committed to his being wrong; if the data and parameters are honest (e.g.., is he comparing never-married people vs. currently-married people? Is he including divorced and widowed people in his set of "single" people"? Is he doing anything to show causation and not just correlation?). Many ideologically motivated people have made these same claims many times and none to my knowledge have shown any causal relationship between marriage and happiness; in fact, every global, longitudinal study of which I'm aware have not even shown a correlation. Are people in HAPPY marriages happier than single people, on average? Yeah, the data show that but the delta is very small. So, unless this guy has conducted novel, groundbreaking work, his research at best shows a weak correlation between happy marriage and people who've never been married. Bella DePaulo has devoted her entire career to researching happiness and its potential correlation with relationship status and systematically debunked every study making larger claims to the contrary. Here's just one example: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/living-single/201304/oh-wonkblog-you-blew-it-on-marriage-and-happiness
Again, I'm open to believing anything the data conclusively show. It makes intuitive sense to me that marriage would have the tendency to increase happiness. And I think it makes intuitive sense to everyone based on our social conditioning (at least social conditioning prior to Gen Z). But intuition and anecdotes are not data if you're a serious and honest academic. Or just a person of pretty basic intelligence.
Interesting observation about our Gen Z son. My wife and I have both noted that’s he’s gotten much better at being responsible now that he has a serious girlfriend. He’s also happier. He has a purpose - he wants to prove he’s worthy of her. She makes him better.
Being married and having children presents challenges and obstacles that have to be overcome in order to move forward. When you successfully navigate what can be very difficult moments in your life, it brings a very satisfying sense of accomplishment that you and your spouse were able to solve a problem or simply drop an issue and move past it.
Simple things like your baby sleeping against you soothe the soul. Seeing your child achieve something they didn't think they could do, and them seeing you cheering them on, is an amazing experience that the unmarried, childless people will never understand.
There's nothing special about making lots of money or having a great career if the only people you can share it with are coworkers that will mostly forget you approximately two minutes after you or them moves on to a different position somewhere else.
It's almost as if those who live the prototypical Christian and Jewish lifestyles - have superior outcomes. Who could have predicted that? Okay, who besides Moses and Jesus could have predicted that?
Married couples who actually pray together, not as a group, not counting meal blessings, not counting bedtime prayers with two kids, but two people, praying together for each other? The divorce rate sinks even further, as in below 10%. (Sociologists don't like to ask questions where (1) they know the answer, and (2) they don't like the answer.)
What about that barbaric custom of circumcision? It decreases urinary tract infections in young men, which is why medicaid covers the procedure for poor mothers.
What about pork? It seems like a small thing, but isn't the Kosher diet just the original Mediterranean Diet (minus pork and shellfish). Don't get me wrong, I l.o.v.e. bacon, but I cannot deny that perhaps pork isn't the healthiest meat.
If fasting good for you? Well, that's part of the Judaeo Christian heritage too.
What about joining a church or other committed group? Happiness rate increases.
I almost feel sorry for folks trying to prove Christians are all bigots with poor lifestyles. Because the only reliable social experiments that seem to be predict happiness? Those experiments show, just as above, that the Jewish Christian lifestyle is "good" for you. Many of us live happy committed lives, with happy children, in happy communities. Just as Moses and Jesus predicted.
Can the sequel to this book be "How to Get Married"? I always thought I'd meet my partner in college, but over a decade after graduating, I'm still single. And I've literally done the things mentioned at the end of this piece (and tried many other strategies): I've gotten actively engaged in my local church, I volunteer at the food bank, and, as an introvert, this is painful, but I attend the office parties. I trust that good research was done for this book to document the attitudes of twenty-somethings, especially women, who want to put career over marriage, and I don't doubt that many do. I am also an ambitious woman who has put in many years of education and work, and my career is important. But I've always wanted a husband and a family and have never considered my career more important. And, anecdotally, the majority of my female friends, many of whom are still single, want that, too. Very, very much. So while I agree with the argument of the book, and think it's an important one, it stings a little to hear this when I, and many people I know, want this but haven't been able to achieve it yet. We don't need to be convinced. It's hard to date, and even harder to meet potential partners who also want lives and families and futures together. Much digital ink has been spilled on how dating apps, dating culture, and demographic differences have ruined things for those who do want to get married, but solutions to this ever-growing problem remain evermore elusive.
The best book I read on dating was "How to know if someone is worth pursuing in two dates or less". It basically leads you to know your values and what is most important to you. So dating is less of a posturing to attract someone, and more of an effort to know and be known by them from the get go. And if they do not have similar values, you break it off before you break your heart or theirs. Much kinder in the long run.
I have been happily married for 20 years to my second husband. We are different but very compatible and he is my best friend. I just love being around him, and fortunately, we do a lot of projects together - so I am very lucky. I hope you will be too.
However much you love your career, there will be times when it bores you, or you come to hate it. or it frustrates you. What do you turn to then? Your life should be your family, and your career is how you support it. I met my wife 47 years ago and we have both found that a stable home life has supported us through the ups and downs of medical careers.
There's many hopeful comments in the comment section today, as well as good advice and a lot of thoughtful discussion. Pretty good for a prospect the media dubs as the doom and gloom of society that we're heading for a population cliff, no one is having sex anymore, and the younger generations either lament a lack of people to get married to, prioritize getting laid, or are hyper-focused on having a good career.
Ultimately, marriage is a sacrifice by both people, and you learn to take care of your most important needs (eating, sleeping enough, exercise, good hygiene) to be a functional person to serve, sacrifice, and love that other person as practice to doing the same thing when you have kids. Getting married is an adjustment where two entirely separate people have to learn to coexist with one another; as much as I hated having roommates at times, it was good practice before I got married, though with a lot of growing pains on both sides for myself and the mates. One of the best pieces of advice down below is intentionality and making a special ritual out of date nights or "adult time" as someone else put it.
It doesn't have to always be big grand gestures, but small acts of kindness, love, and thoughtfulness toward you partner.
TFP, we need an article from all the married people of many years to round this out talking about what they've learned.
I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but my wife and I found that once our son was old enough, allowing one parent to take a few days and do something they want to was key. For my wife, she would go to a convention she really liked while I stayed home with our son. Or occasionally she would just go with a girlfriend to someplace close by and de-stress. I was going on business trips and when I quit that job because of too much travel, I would go to a college football game with buddies for the weekend. We would also get a baby sitter and go do things together we liked too. And once when our son was around 11 we left him with his aunt (who he was very comfortable with) for a week and celebrated my wife's birthday out west. For us, having time to just destress was as important as any "Date night."
Reading through the comments for this article has been a joy.
Thank you TFP community.
All too often the comment sections are rife with vitriol and unpleasantness, with people espousing ideas and positions that border on hateful - and certainly not helpful.
But here, it reads like a celebration of how to succeed at living a good and useful life.
Given the basic approach of TFP to the world, I assume TFP community is full of people that have commented on this article - so the other stuff is painful.
So thanks for keeping the faith (so to speak) and making a stand for marriage, family, community.
While I wholeheartedly agree and endorse the main takeaway of the article the logic is a wee bit amusing.
My wife and I have been married 33 years, have raised two wonderful children, and have worked hard together to make the communities in which we've lived better places. Our two children, 29 and 27 are getting married this year. They view making their marriages, and eventually parenthood, the bedrock of their lives as their parents did. We're super happy about that.
So, making marriage a fundamental component of a good life, might not be for everyone, but for most of us - you bet. A community full of strong marriages and strong families definitely has a better shot at being a wonderful place to live.
The article certainly makes this point. It juxtaposes commitment to others in a marriage and raising children, to the self-centric culture of the modern zeitgeist. And then argues that if one gets married they will be happier and richer. And while that might be true, at least on average, it's a funny way to motivate people to serve others.
Getting married is not the easy path. We've been married for 42 years and it takes work, sacrifice, a lot of communication and cooperation (and date nights/trips away) to pull it off -- but there's nothing that compares to the fulfillment of knowing you have each other through thick and thin, and children around you to buoy you up. A successful marriage will rub selfishness off your soul, and in return is joy and peace that is out of this world.
Just a word about “women file for divorce more than men.” There is a reason for that. Men generally think the status quo is fine and won’t listen when told it isn’t. My situation was that my husband moved out to be with his girlfriend but would not sign the divorce papers, probably so he could tell said girlfriend that his Evil Wife would not give him a divorce. I pushed the issue, so yes, this Evil Woman filed for divorce (helped along when Saintly Girlfriend got pregnant).
Articles like this are essentially useless. If you aren't willing to address the issues that discourage marriage and encourage divorce, why comment at all? It's pretty clear women are over it -- that is, doing the bulk of domestic labor regardless of employment. Who wouldn't rather be single than live with a man child and constant resentment? Bring back Home Ec and make it mandatory for all high school graduates. And while you're at it, bring back Shop and make it too mandatory. If you want people to have more babies, tackle falling sperm counts, paid parental leave, daycare costs, etc. Else, shut up.
That "Stably married men heading toward retirement have a staggering 10 times more assets than their divorced or never-married male peers" has a lot to do with the well researched fact that women looking for a mate have a strong preference for men with good paying jobs or large financial resources, and I've seen several women divorce their formerly well off husbands when they lost their money.
So many young people turn away from a lifetime commitment or say things like “I don’t need a piece of paper to love someone”.
Three years ago, my wife and I were celebrating our 35th Anniversary, and our waitress was an educated and very impressive woman who was hoping her boyfriend would be accepted at a top b-school. This was supposed to be a magic gate, after which they would commit to each other. She was around 30. I urged her to move things along and said that time waits for no one.
Just months after our 36th Anniversary, my wife passed away following an illness that stalked us for three years. We knew that night on the 35th that we might have only a year or two left.
Would we have jumped into marriage if we knew the terrible end we would face? I would like to say “absolutely”. From this vantage point, looking back with only memories and an ache from her absence, I know fully now just how much I loved her and she me.
We never would have experienced the depth of grief and loss had we never taken the plunge. For that, I am grateful at a profound level. She is still very much a part of me and always will be. We met on a blind date in NYC after college. I only wish I had known her when we were children.
He needs to show his work. Where are the actual data and study parameters supporting his claims? I'm *not* ideologically committed to his being wrong; if the data and parameters are honest (e.g.., is he comparing never-married people vs. currently-married people? Is he including divorced and widowed people in his set of "single" people"? Is he doing anything to show causation and not just correlation?). Many ideologically motivated people have made these same claims many times and none to my knowledge have shown any causal relationship between marriage and happiness; in fact, every global, longitudinal study of which I'm aware have not even shown a correlation. Are people in HAPPY marriages happier than single people, on average? Yeah, the data show that but the delta is very small. So, unless this guy has conducted novel, groundbreaking work, his research at best shows a weak correlation between happy marriage and people who've never been married. Bella DePaulo has devoted her entire career to researching happiness and its potential correlation with relationship status and systematically debunked every study making larger claims to the contrary. Here's just one example: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/living-single/201304/oh-wonkblog-you-blew-it-on-marriage-and-happiness
Again, I'm open to believing anything the data conclusively show. It makes intuitive sense to me that marriage would have the tendency to increase happiness. And I think it makes intuitive sense to everyone based on our social conditioning (at least social conditioning prior to Gen Z). But intuition and anecdotes are not data if you're a serious and honest academic. Or just a person of pretty basic intelligence.
Why am I not surprised this book isn’t part of the catalog at the Brooklyn Public Library...
Interesting observation about our Gen Z son. My wife and I have both noted that’s he’s gotten much better at being responsible now that he has a serious girlfriend. He’s also happier. He has a purpose - he wants to prove he’s worthy of her. She makes him better.
Being married and having children presents challenges and obstacles that have to be overcome in order to move forward. When you successfully navigate what can be very difficult moments in your life, it brings a very satisfying sense of accomplishment that you and your spouse were able to solve a problem or simply drop an issue and move past it.
Simple things like your baby sleeping against you soothe the soul. Seeing your child achieve something they didn't think they could do, and them seeing you cheering them on, is an amazing experience that the unmarried, childless people will never understand.
There's nothing special about making lots of money or having a great career if the only people you can share it with are coworkers that will mostly forget you approximately two minutes after you or them moves on to a different position somewhere else.
Sociology gets curiouser and curiouser.
It's almost as if those who live the prototypical Christian and Jewish lifestyles - have superior outcomes. Who could have predicted that? Okay, who besides Moses and Jesus could have predicted that?
Married couples who actually pray together, not as a group, not counting meal blessings, not counting bedtime prayers with two kids, but two people, praying together for each other? The divorce rate sinks even further, as in below 10%. (Sociologists don't like to ask questions where (1) they know the answer, and (2) they don't like the answer.)
What about that barbaric custom of circumcision? It decreases urinary tract infections in young men, which is why medicaid covers the procedure for poor mothers.
What about pork? It seems like a small thing, but isn't the Kosher diet just the original Mediterranean Diet (minus pork and shellfish). Don't get me wrong, I l.o.v.e. bacon, but I cannot deny that perhaps pork isn't the healthiest meat.
If fasting good for you? Well, that's part of the Judaeo Christian heritage too.
What about joining a church or other committed group? Happiness rate increases.
I almost feel sorry for folks trying to prove Christians are all bigots with poor lifestyles. Because the only reliable social experiments that seem to be predict happiness? Those experiments show, just as above, that the Jewish Christian lifestyle is "good" for you. Many of us live happy committed lives, with happy children, in happy communities. Just as Moses and Jesus predicted.
Can the sequel to this book be "How to Get Married"? I always thought I'd meet my partner in college, but over a decade after graduating, I'm still single. And I've literally done the things mentioned at the end of this piece (and tried many other strategies): I've gotten actively engaged in my local church, I volunteer at the food bank, and, as an introvert, this is painful, but I attend the office parties. I trust that good research was done for this book to document the attitudes of twenty-somethings, especially women, who want to put career over marriage, and I don't doubt that many do. I am also an ambitious woman who has put in many years of education and work, and my career is important. But I've always wanted a husband and a family and have never considered my career more important. And, anecdotally, the majority of my female friends, many of whom are still single, want that, too. Very, very much. So while I agree with the argument of the book, and think it's an important one, it stings a little to hear this when I, and many people I know, want this but haven't been able to achieve it yet. We don't need to be convinced. It's hard to date, and even harder to meet potential partners who also want lives and families and futures together. Much digital ink has been spilled on how dating apps, dating culture, and demographic differences have ruined things for those who do want to get married, but solutions to this ever-growing problem remain evermore elusive.
The best book I read on dating was "How to know if someone is worth pursuing in two dates or less". It basically leads you to know your values and what is most important to you. So dating is less of a posturing to attract someone, and more of an effort to know and be known by them from the get go. And if they do not have similar values, you break it off before you break your heart or theirs. Much kinder in the long run.
I have been happily married for 20 years to my second husband. We are different but very compatible and he is my best friend. I just love being around him, and fortunately, we do a lot of projects together - so I am very lucky. I hope you will be too.
Read Rabbi Manis Friedman.
However much you love your career, there will be times when it bores you, or you come to hate it. or it frustrates you. What do you turn to then? Your life should be your family, and your career is how you support it. I met my wife 47 years ago and we have both found that a stable home life has supported us through the ups and downs of medical careers.
There's many hopeful comments in the comment section today, as well as good advice and a lot of thoughtful discussion. Pretty good for a prospect the media dubs as the doom and gloom of society that we're heading for a population cliff, no one is having sex anymore, and the younger generations either lament a lack of people to get married to, prioritize getting laid, or are hyper-focused on having a good career.
Ultimately, marriage is a sacrifice by both people, and you learn to take care of your most important needs (eating, sleeping enough, exercise, good hygiene) to be a functional person to serve, sacrifice, and love that other person as practice to doing the same thing when you have kids. Getting married is an adjustment where two entirely separate people have to learn to coexist with one another; as much as I hated having roommates at times, it was good practice before I got married, though with a lot of growing pains on both sides for myself and the mates. One of the best pieces of advice down below is intentionality and making a special ritual out of date nights or "adult time" as someone else put it.
It doesn't have to always be big grand gestures, but small acts of kindness, love, and thoughtfulness toward you partner.
TFP, we need an article from all the married people of many years to round this out talking about what they've learned.
I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but my wife and I found that once our son was old enough, allowing one parent to take a few days and do something they want to was key. For my wife, she would go to a convention she really liked while I stayed home with our son. Or occasionally she would just go with a girlfriend to someplace close by and de-stress. I was going on business trips and when I quit that job because of too much travel, I would go to a college football game with buddies for the weekend. We would also get a baby sitter and go do things together we liked too. And once when our son was around 11 we left him with his aunt (who he was very comfortable with) for a week and celebrated my wife's birthday out west. For us, having time to just destress was as important as any "Date night."
Reading through the comments for this article has been a joy.
Thank you TFP community.
All too often the comment sections are rife with vitriol and unpleasantness, with people espousing ideas and positions that border on hateful - and certainly not helpful.
But here, it reads like a celebration of how to succeed at living a good and useful life.
Given the basic approach of TFP to the world, I assume TFP community is full of people that have commented on this article - so the other stuff is painful.
So thanks for keeping the faith (so to speak) and making a stand for marriage, family, community.
While I wholeheartedly agree and endorse the main takeaway of the article the logic is a wee bit amusing.
My wife and I have been married 33 years, have raised two wonderful children, and have worked hard together to make the communities in which we've lived better places. Our two children, 29 and 27 are getting married this year. They view making their marriages, and eventually parenthood, the bedrock of their lives as their parents did. We're super happy about that.
So, making marriage a fundamental component of a good life, might not be for everyone, but for most of us - you bet. A community full of strong marriages and strong families definitely has a better shot at being a wonderful place to live.
The article certainly makes this point. It juxtaposes commitment to others in a marriage and raising children, to the self-centric culture of the modern zeitgeist. And then argues that if one gets married they will be happier and richer. And while that might be true, at least on average, it's a funny way to motivate people to serve others.