Woman, what is your role in dating?

Post Reply New Topic

good god we are totally ruining the point of relationships. what the hell!! this is starting to get really stupid after a while. we are taking this to seriously. friends figure out the cure to things. wow.

I would imagine most people (perhaps overwhelmingly-most) believe that their marriage is going to work and that they have the experiences to back up their faith in their partner to work out hard times together.

And then there are the divorce rates.

Going in to any major life plan ignorant of the potential for failure is an awful idea, why would marriage be any different when it's one of the biggest life changes there is? Everyone thinks they're the exception, that they're going to be one of the couples that works out, but it is silly to ignore the reality of things and pretend that your 'marriage ideal' is guaranteed.

Sometimes the only way to realize that things couldn't work out is when they don't, sometimes all of the research and planning in the world won't give you the knowledge that comes from experiencing failure itself. You may think you know someone inside-and-out, but that's not something we can truly be sure of even if we like to believe it. You can never be sure that you are wise today, because it is only in the future that we realize how foolish we really were and how little we really knew. Pursue your dreams, but have a plan for when you fall short of them, so that if the worst happens you haven't lost everything and can get back to your pursuit.

Many of us aspies are INTJs, and INTJs have a reputation of 'thinking 5 steps ahead' and forming contingency plans for if our ideals don't work out. These plans aren't doomed to happen just because we make them. We want to account for every outcome, we don't like surprises - whatever happens we have a network of alternatives, but we still aim for the path we want most. A prenup is a prime example of this type of thinking.

I don't view a prenup as an inherently "I want to get away with as much as I can if we divorce" contract, I view it as a "People change and we can't know how things will be 10-15 years from now" agreement. I think there is a fundamental difference between viewing a prenup as a note of distrust versus a note of acknowledgement of human nature and uncertainty.

There is a world of difference between planning for a maybe you don't really expect to ever happen, just because it would be foolish not to, and the casual (to me) "oh well, most marriages don't last anyway, so I will from the start keep things separate" attitude that came across in the post that I started debating.

Yep. As I think I posted elsewhere, I didn't expect my nice kind fully-employed husband to be an habitué of mental wards. Inpatient, outpatient, everything. Just prudent insurance, prenups.

All that said, I am not a religious person, and it's never seemed sensible to me that marriages should last an entire life. Your understanding of who you are, your interests, your values, your enthusiasm for marriage itself -- all these things can change, especially when you're in the thick of it, raising children or running a business or having one of you go off to war. Sometimes a phase of life is simply over. I see many people stay together to finish what they started, raising their children, then splitting amicably, having already quietly started their new lives. I don't see why not.

Not making sandwitches?

In addition to the lousy attitude that "marriage is like serial monogamy, and I'll get a divorce when I get bored", I don't see what changing interests and values have to do with anything. People that need to have similar interests and values shouldn't get into marriages. Marriage is about living together, not creating a symbiotic state with a single person. There is nothing wrong with perusing new interests on your own if your partner isn't interested, and when you have been married for over 20 years as I have, you no longer need to share everything and do everything together. Besides, most Aspies will need time alone right from the start, so this should be planned from the start..

This may sound really stupid but I get all of my views on romatic interaction and rules from whatever is mentioned in lectures and I do history So my view because of that is from the 50s, that males are the pursuers and and the women can set the limit but not actively initiate the relationship. I "know" that it wasn't even meant as dating advice but a description of how society was at a time, but to me as a shy person this advice actually works out very well