Views on the Status of Marriage

Now that is an interesting question. Of course, there could be a completely unrelated reason though, too.

Also, I've never heard that rule about makeup either. Plenty of married women I know wear makeup.

edited 27th Jan '14 6:48:53 PM by shiro_okami

I know it wasn't a very good example, but there is arguably less social expectations on a married woman to maintain the facade of femininity then on a single woman.

edited 27th Jan '14 6:54:33 PM by joeyjojo

hashtagsarestupid

Well, yeah. A person is supposed to make themselves as attractive as possible to attract a mate. Of course the pressure lets off.

Not Three Laws compliant.

Can't say there is none at all, though: On top of my head, I can think of at least three sources of pressure to "be as attractive as possible" while married:

1. Keep looking more attractive than other women for status among them.
2. Attract a better mate.
3. Pressure from mate who wants to go "look what an attractive woman I married!" for status among other men.

And there are probably other reasons.

edited 28th Jan '14 2:18:51 AM by Medinoc

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

You forgot : stay attractive to keep your mate.

I think the Tomboy page has a pretty good definition of "Tomboy": A Tomboy is a girl, usually a young one (the implication being that she will "grow out of it" note ), who has tastes and behaviors usually associated with boys.

Not saying it's the only correct definition, but I see no conflict with being married and being a tomboy.

Laws are made to be broken. You're next, thermodynamics.

I'm more willing to put stock into 'homespun wisdom' then most tropers but even I have trouble taking seriously the idea that only girly girls are fit for marriage .

Cultural ideals of femininity very greatly from era to era and even person to person. The fact your spouse doesn't conform to one of them or even all them does not make her any less of a woman.

edited 15th Feb '14 3:19:42 AM by JOEyJojO

hashtagsarestupid

Yeah I'm gonna have to second that.

I never quite understood that entire idea honestly. Like at all.

Oh really when?

Is it even proven that people generally find tomboys unattractive?

I tend to find women with a fun personality most attractive, and I'm also attracted to intelligence.

I hope I didn't already mention this, but my dad told me a friend of his, who is married to an unintelligent wife, was talking to a woman in a library. As he they were chatting about various high-minded subjects, he noticed he was getting a boner. He got a hardon literally from talking to a smart woman. He felt guilty about it because, well, he's married, and this proved that he craved an intelligent woman in his life.

Hopefully the whole "girls pretend to be dumb to get boys to like them" nonsense will be a thing of the past in the future.

However, I am hearing that apparently, women really want men who are their equals, and that may be a reason why marriages where the woman makes more money than the man tend to have problems. The "alpha male" types say that this is proof that women want to be led by a man, but I wonder to what degree society and/or human nature will change. People, after all, tend to get used to the way things "are" and have a hard time dealing with change, especially sudden change.

Okay, I have to throw this in there. There's apparently studies showing that America's happiness has declined, and the decline is due to a decline in women's happiness specifically, while men's happiness has stayed the same over the past few decades.

If that's the case, what are the likely causes? And is this true in other countries? Denmark ranks high in happiness worldwide and is far more liberal and feminist than the US, and their marriages which end in divorce last longer than marriages in the US that end in divorce (11 years vs. 8 years for us). However, Danish tend to be more likely to have children when not married, and treat an unmarried couple with kids as a family, so that can be misleading. If that's the case, what is the cause of their greater happiness than ours?

I have a couple of guesses, though that's all they are:

Economic equality, sort of. The drop in income among the middle class, and the growth of people just barely above the poverty line, I personally think is one of the biggest factors. Money woes are one of the primary causes of divorce as well, and the added stress of living hand to mouth would put a damper on anyone's happiness.

Unrealistic expectations, to a degree. Media and marketing has been hitting today's adults since before they could read, and in media it's unusual to see happy single parents, or amicable divorce, or anything other than long-term happy couples or their opposite, miserable married couples. We're told over and over that people just fall in love, when the reality is that love and relationships take quite a bit of effort and work. So many other things in our lives are fairly easily replaceable or disposable, and I know people who treat their relationships the same way, that as soon as they have to start putting effort into it or it gets boring they get a new lover with the same care they upgrade their iPhone.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

This. Also, many Americans are either spoiled, or they want to be spoiled, largely due to said media and marketing. Of course, the irony is that it is getting harder and harder to maintain that "higher" standard of living because of inflation and also difficulty in finding jobs because of a recession.

Since we're an international website, we get a lot of opinions from around the world on here. Which is important, since many Americans seem to have a view limited to how things work in their own country, or how they perceive them here.

For example, many of you have pointed to examples of non-traditional marriages, including ones where the wife was in charge, as ones that have been successful. However, most of these were outside the US, even though some were in conservative countries such as Switzerland.

I am hearing that supposedly, here in the US, many men who marry hot women are scared that the women will divorce them when someone "better" comes along, and that men are telling each other to only trust Asian wives. Because they're loyal? I dunno. I'm so tired of "masculine"/"feminine" stuff, and the whole "alpha male"/"subservient female" thing. I am not attracted to subservient women at all.

What have you seen that seems to make a good marriage tick? You've seen many examples of non-traditional marriages that worked, so what was the glue that held them together?

I do think "hookup culture" is a bad thing. I've seen people complain about how it really hurt families, and harmed the kids in particular if any had been had in such a marriage. A coworker who is unmarried is co-raising her son with her ex-boyfriend, separately, and tells me that her son has it well, since he has "two of everything" and his parents don't talk shit about each other, despite not being together. She figured out how to make that work.

One of the biggest things I've seen help marriages is that the couple actually talk to each other about important things that are bothering them. A lot of people rush into marriage and then find out what their new spouse is really like.

Not Three Laws compliant.

What explains the whole "men marry hot women and then get afraid they'll screw them over" thing I keep hearing about? Admittedly, I only hear about it in the US, where divorce laws are slanted heavily in favor of women. This only a US thing? A result of hookup culture, where people don't marry because they truly plan to be together forever, but instead because it seemed like a good idea at the time?

Influence of the media perpetuating the idea.

Explain please?

An interesting editorial about equality and marriage. The tl;dr version: the more equal both parties are, the less satisfied they are with their sex life; the 'golden number' for happiness seems to be men doing 40% of the chores and women bringing in 40% of the income.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

40% is only slightly less than equal. I'd have thought that the number would be something much lower, like 25% or less.

Reading article now.

So it's proven that it leads to greater emotional satisfaction... and less sex? Interesting paradox. Then there's this:

Definitely a positive.

This seems to indicate that marriage/relationship roles and sexual roles are totally different things. I think that is what many people are confused by. The "alpha male" type people seem to ignore or be unaware that helping out with the marriage makes for a happier marriage/family. The "total egalitarian" people seem to be unaware that when it comes to sexy stuff, roles change and each person doesn't want the same thing. It seems to indicate that being submissive is something resolved for the bedroom, for intentional fun, and not for the actual marriage itself.

Ironically, this all fits into my largely egalitarian values - that people may all be different, but they all deserve equal rights. And dom/sub is simply a role that people settle into... in the bedroom only.

edited 7th Feb '14 1:51:14 PM by BonsaiForest

Second post, since I consider this a different subject.

That sounds like something that's changeable. That is, people have certain expectations now, but changing realities can result in changing expectations which can result in people having a better idea of what to expect and working things out.

There's a specific example of expectations cutting into people's happiness. Agian, changeable over time.

Two things there. One, that there are people who accept and enjoy those kinds of arrangements. Two, that there are those who don't... and I'm thinking that again, this is largely an expectations problem.

I think this guy has a very good, realistic idea. The article also mentions that people tend to be more sexually attracted to difference, but are in many other ways, happier with similarity. How to balance that??

Every sexual era is unhappy in its own way? I'd be interested to know more of what that means. It also makes me think that these Chicken Little "alpha male" types who complain that society is doomed, doomed I tell you! unless we go back to The Way Thins Were, are not looking at the full picture at all.

edited 7th Feb '14 1:50:25 PM by BonsaiForest

Of course not. They're only concerned with what they themselves want. A slave that does not question them.

That's just the expectations of femininity and masculinity tought to us by society not an unchangable rules. The people and the media create and perpetuate these notions of gender in the first place. But it is changing, even if slowly and won't be much of a problem in the future. It has only been two generations after all and people from the "era"(the fifties) of the traditional family are still alive.

Or necessarily the same thing for their whole lives either. But people who are egalitarian and can talk about sex on the same level are actually better fitted to find mutual happiness than those who automatically think only the man's opinion counts.

edited 8th Feb '14 3:00:14 PM by Antiteilchen

You'd be looking for the similarity and difference in different areas, which would have little to no correlation.

Laws are made to be broken. You're next, thermodynamics.

If I remember right, it's that you get along well with people who have similar interests, but different personalities.

Not Three Laws compliant.

I've heard that the opposite often happens as well - different interests, similar personalities, and they can relate emotionally.