Post No.: 0992
Fluffystealthkitten says:
According to the average statistics (hence this won’t be true for everyone yet nonetheless it’s most likely true for anyone) – don’t marry young but do eventually marry. Even though happiness levels won’t typically stay elevated beyond the first few years of marriage – life satisfaction will tend to. It may appear odd that people who are married can report more life satisfaction than people who aren’t married yet don’t report any more day-to-day satisfaction but this is due to hedonic adaptation to the new norm, along with one’s set point of happiness.
In more detail – a happy marriage will of course make you feel blissful; an unhappy marriage, separation or divorce will make you feel less blithesome; and widowers or those who have never married before will fall somewhere inbetween in happiness, on average. A happy partner makes us feel happier too hence we must attend to the well-being of our partner as well as ourselves.
If you feel like you must get married otherwise you’ll consider yourself a failure (this social pressure is placed on women more than on men) then you might hastily jump into a marriage that ends up being unhappy and this will likely be worse than if you had stayed single. Understand that any type of healthy relationship will increase our happiness, not just a romantic partner – hence enriching relationships can be had with platonic friends or relatives, and possibly pets, instead or too. In fact, when it comes to preventing depression and experiencing a high quality of life – friendships are vastly more important than having an intimate or romantic partner. People can live happily and healthily without ever being married but are far more unlikely to do so without good friends and family.
Trying to live up to the ideal of a ‘perfect marriage’ is too high an expectation and will likely lead to stress and unhappiness too. And staying in a relationship that has turned bitter for the sake of maintaining this ideal image brings enormous unhappiness. Simply, if we cannot live up to our ideals, this creates discontentment. Trying to conform to gender roles in a relationship when they don’t suit a particular couple creates woe too. Expecting to find ‘the one’ and then you’ll ‘live happily ever after’ is misguided because it takes continual effort to get to know someone and to keep the love nourished. So don’t expect a lasting, joyful relationship to be effortlessly organic – it takes work! Couples who frequently talk together in amicable ways will more likely stay together (this is obviously true with any type of relationship). Never forget the humour and playfulness, appreciation, gratitude and forgiveness. Be open to emotional disclosures. Show acceptance of each other. And don’t suppress or stifle each other.
We should have some ideals to aim for but we need to manage our expectations and put continual effort into our relationships rather than think that it’ll be like some kind of furry tail ending. Post No.: 0771 mentioned that the wedding day is just one day. Well even royals in real life sometimes get divorced; although fortunately no longer beheaded!
Being single isn’t all bad – it means you can do whatever you like, whenever you like, which in turn means you can more likely live your authentic life. Single people can be more integrated with their communities and wider social circles, like family, friends and neighbours, because marriage can make us become more insular as we just end up focusing on our partner, and children if we have any.
But it depends hugely on whether you choose and want to be single or not. Another factor is that single people can be stigmatised, prejudged and discriminated against – from getting grief about being single, or being assumed that one is self-centred or immature, to not receiving as many social security benefits, tax breaks or as much workplace family leave as couples, or the economies of scale from living with others. Living alone is more expensive per head. Single siblings may also be expected to take care of their aging parents more than their married siblings.
If you do get married, a pre-nuptial agreement can potentially kill the romance – if either of you feel the need for one then it might be a sign that you shouldn’t get married to each other because the trust isn’t there? It can make the partnership feel more like a market/business relationship instead of a social one.
Financial issues and practical reality problems are some of the most common reasons for break-ups. Keeping bank accounts separate can avoid the effects of power imbalances, maintain individual control and keep things simple in a relationship, especially if the partners later split. But once a couple really trusts each other and believes they share the same goals – having a joint bank account can help a relationship survive best, perhaps because it obliges a couple to regularly and honestly talk about their finances together. Pooling resources together will make you feel like you’re firmly on the same trusting team with shared goals and financial harmony. Literally mi casa, su casa. It also enables more transparency in terms of how much money you have, who’s spending it, and how. You’ll be more willing to do things for each other without expecting reciprocity. Compelling both partners to get clued up about and get on top of understanding the household finances is also vital in case one of them dies or becomes mentally incapacitated.
And it appears to be causal – merging your accounts increases relationship happiness, not (just) relationship happiness leads to wanting to merge your accounts. It mightn’t be the best route for all kinds of couples though, like those who’ve experienced money problems in previous relationships thus wish to protect themselves by keeping bank accounts separate, or if one partner owns their own business and needs to keep that account separate. Of course each partner could have a combination of a joint account and their own separate accounts but the above benefits arise when the joint account is the main household account.
Sometimes certain friendships develop into the passion and intimacy of romantic love. Humans are social animals and have a need to belong and connect with others in enduring, close and positive relationships – it helps the specie’s survival to cooperate, plus (not that single parents cannot do brilliantly but) the survival of infants increases when there’s a bonded couple supporting each other together.
But only have children if and when you plan for and want them. Although it’s complex, it is responsible to only bring a baby into this world if one is willing and able to raise one with utmost care and attention (which doesn’t mean spoiling them). Fathers should share parenting duties with mothers (watch out for those who pretend they’re useless or slow at a particular chore they don’t wish to do – they could be hoping that you’ll never ask them to do that task ever again!)
All creatures ought to love their genetically-related kin from a ‘selfish gene’ perspective yet humans are a kind of species that evolved to express love and devotion like relatively few other species do – probably in major part to care for their vulnerable offspring enough to raise them for many years since human babies drain plenty of resources and take a relatively long time to raise.
And if the parents, and wider extended family, and communities, can stick together to help raise the next generation then there’s an even higher chance for the offspring surviving into adulthood. Therefore grandparents sticking together and around to care for grandchildren brings evolutionary benefits too.
There’s also the over-firing by-product effects of this love and devotion that lead to finding even some other animals cute and worth nurturing too, like cats and dogs – which then co-evolved into a mutual benefit. Meow.
There are however pros and cons for having children – on a personal level, population level (bearing in mind intergenerational imbalances if fertility rates suddenly decrease), as well as a philosophical level because no child can give their consent to being born before being born, not least to any particular pair of parents i.e. all life is forced into existence instead of under its own prior consent or free choice (which suggests that libertarians ought to never have children!) There’s also a difference in feeling of loss in the heart between people dying compared to them having never been born in the first place. (From a personal perspective, is it better to not have lived than to live then fear death?) Yet to not risk tremendous pain is to not give a chance for tremendous joy.
While we’re sidetracking onto some philosophical queries(!) – although raising children is hard, should more sympathy go towards those who are coupled and voluntarily have children, or towards those who are involuntarily single and alone? And when a married person with children dies, it’s most sad for those who survive that person. When an unmarried person with no children dies, it’s most sad for the deceased person because they never got that far in life and fewer relatives alive will deeply care to remember them.
Lots of working women are choosing to have children later, have fewer children, or not have any children ever. But if ‘dumb people’ freely breed like rabbits while ‘intelligent professionals’ barely have children – isn’t that just the free market, as it were, expressing itself? We cannot or shouldn’t force ‘intelligent professionals’ to breed more and/or force ‘dumb people’ to breed less. (Well if we believe that ‘intelligent people’ aren’t breeding enough then can we call them ‘intelligent’? We can therefore see that the definition of ‘intelligence’ is subjective. And if people ought to be ‘rationally self-interested’ and ‘greed is good’ then these ‘mass breeders’ are being just that! Also, perhaps the counterpoint to ‘raising children is hard’ is that it cannot require that much intelligence if ‘dumb people’ can raise plenty of offspring(!) Survival of the fittest is ultimately about breeding and raising offspring, who in turn later breed and raise offspring of their own – not about selecting for greater intelligence or any other trait per se. Other animal species have existed for far longer than humans have so far despite being considered ‘dumber’.)
Do be careful during the early years of raising children together – don’t neglect some time for romance even though time is needed for raising the children.
Ensure that pregnant women are as stress-free as possible and don’t ever lose their appetite since prenatal stress can affect the development of an unborn baby. In the same vein, raise children with as little chronic stress as possible placed upon them.
Abandoned or neglected children are more likely to grow up to become anxious and develop other mental health problems. Our lives are, or should be, full of interactions with others. Everybody loves feeling welcome and accepted. And we often spend lots of time, effort, resources and emotions on trying to form, and on being in, friendships, alliances, communities, families and relationships. Finding people we can trust or love makes us feel valued and irrepressibly jubilant!
Our self-esteem is a rough barometer of the quality of our relationships. Whenever we’re feeling stressed or in a new and unfamiliar place, we yearn for home and family and friends. Rejection or losing a loved one triggers pain, withdrawal and/or jealousy and makes us more mindful of mortality. And reminders of death in turn heighten our need to belong, be around others and hold close those whom we cherish; our differences no longer mattering as much.
In concert with feeling autonomous and competent – feeling supported reduces stress (a burden shared) thus we generally feel healthier and happier if we have strong and dependable relationships.
Meow. If you’d like to share your thoughts on being single versus married, and having children versus not, then please feel free via the Twitter comment button below.
Comment on this post by replying to this tweet:
