<story><title>Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person (2016)</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/why-you-will-marry-the-wrong-person.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>phoe-krk</author><text>&amp;gt; because marriage is not something you &amp;quot;do&amp;quot;, it&amp;#x27;s something you make.&lt;p&gt;This is a bold assumption that will not hold in many countries and regions that consider marriage as something that is &amp;quot;done&amp;quot;, especially if the act that proclaims it as &amp;quot;done&amp;quot; it&amp;#x27;s performed in the presence of some holy man, in a holy building, and if the marriage is, in any way, legally or morally &amp;quot;irreversible&amp;quot; or impossible to effectively unmake even for strongest and most plausible reasons to do so.&lt;p&gt;Such rules, counter-intuitively, make it much harder for marriages to be happy. If a marriage is &amp;quot;done&amp;quot;, then there&amp;#x27;s no point in trying to &amp;quot;make&amp;quot; it - whether it means to make it better, make it worthwhile, or even make it happen with someone better-suited for the role.</text></item><item><author>simonsarris</author><text>The framework given in the first paragraph (which both I and de Botton reject) is fundamentally wrong because marriage is not something you &amp;quot;do&amp;quot;, it&amp;#x27;s something you make. One of the foremost requirements going in to a marriage is that both partners understand this. You will marry the right person if you change your axioms.&lt;p&gt;de Botton &lt;i&gt;kind of&lt;/i&gt; alludes to this here but in a wordy and deeply pessimistic way, but I don&amp;#x27;t think that&amp;#x27;s a good framing for it.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; It might sound odd, but pessimism relieves the excessive imaginative pressure that our romantic culture places upon marriage&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Romanticism has been unhelpful to us; it is a harsh philosophy. It has made a lot of what we go through in marriage seem exceptional and appalling.&lt;p&gt;I disagree, contrary to what he says a Romantic (in the literary sense) view always &lt;i&gt;allows us to be flawed,&lt;/i&gt; because it always contains room for redemption. Thinking that marriage will be some kind of perfect union is rationalist thinking, like designing a system of gears. Thinking of marriage as union of two people who work together for something greater that both can share the fruits of is irrational thinking we need and can easily intuit. We&amp;#x27;re just really good at shunning this kind of thinking, these days.&lt;p&gt;In the end we both agree, he says: &amp;quot;Compatibility is an achievement of love; it must not be its precondition.&amp;quot; I just think his framing here is needlessly pessimistic and dismissive of the romantic forces, and probably a terrible way to approach most of life&amp;#x27;s difficulties, never-mind marriage.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>harryh</author><text>I can only really speak in much detail about Christianity and Judaism but this is a pretty big misinterpretation of how marriage is supposed to work in both of these religions. While both are generally against divorce they also specify guidelines for how one should behave in a marriage. These guidelines are ways that a marriage is &amp;quot;made&amp;quot; over time.&lt;p&gt;I would imagine that this holds for other religions as well.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person (2016)</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/why-you-will-marry-the-wrong-person.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>phoe-krk</author><text>&amp;gt; because marriage is not something you &amp;quot;do&amp;quot;, it&amp;#x27;s something you make.&lt;p&gt;This is a bold assumption that will not hold in many countries and regions that consider marriage as something that is &amp;quot;done&amp;quot;, especially if the act that proclaims it as &amp;quot;done&amp;quot; it&amp;#x27;s performed in the presence of some holy man, in a holy building, and if the marriage is, in any way, legally or morally &amp;quot;irreversible&amp;quot; or impossible to effectively unmake even for strongest and most plausible reasons to do so.&lt;p&gt;Such rules, counter-intuitively, make it much harder for marriages to be happy. If a marriage is &amp;quot;done&amp;quot;, then there&amp;#x27;s no point in trying to &amp;quot;make&amp;quot; it - whether it means to make it better, make it worthwhile, or even make it happen with someone better-suited for the role.</text></item><item><author>simonsarris</author><text>The framework given in the first paragraph (which both I and de Botton reject) is fundamentally wrong because marriage is not something you &amp;quot;do&amp;quot;, it&amp;#x27;s something you make. One of the foremost requirements going in to a marriage is that both partners understand this. You will marry the right person if you change your axioms.&lt;p&gt;de Botton &lt;i&gt;kind of&lt;/i&gt; alludes to this here but in a wordy and deeply pessimistic way, but I don&amp;#x27;t think that&amp;#x27;s a good framing for it.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; It might sound odd, but pessimism relieves the excessive imaginative pressure that our romantic culture places upon marriage&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Romanticism has been unhelpful to us; it is a harsh philosophy. It has made a lot of what we go through in marriage seem exceptional and appalling.&lt;p&gt;I disagree, contrary to what he says a Romantic (in the literary sense) view always &lt;i&gt;allows us to be flawed,&lt;/i&gt; because it always contains room for redemption. Thinking that marriage will be some kind of perfect union is rationalist thinking, like designing a system of gears. Thinking of marriage as union of two people who work together for something greater that both can share the fruits of is irrational thinking we need and can easily intuit. We&amp;#x27;re just really good at shunning this kind of thinking, these days.&lt;p&gt;In the end we both agree, he says: &amp;quot;Compatibility is an achievement of love; it must not be its precondition.&amp;quot; I just think his framing here is needlessly pessimistic and dismissive of the romantic forces, and probably a terrible way to approach most of life&amp;#x27;s difficulties, never-mind marriage.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>simonsarris</author><text>I disagree. The irreversible nature makes the case for &amp;quot;making&amp;quot; it (work) stronger.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m reminded of GK Chesterton, in Heretics: &amp;quot;Posting a letter and getting married are among the few things left that are entirely romantic; for to be entirely romantic a thing must be irrevocable.&amp;quot;</text></comment>