[N/A] How will I know?

Pi1otguy

Pi1otguy

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WRT getting hitched, how does one make such a decision?

I've been trying to approach this objectively and purely logically but that doesn't seem to work. I guess the real question is how can I make a such a huge decision in the present based partially on feelings that essentially requires me predict how I will feel 5, 10, 20, 40+ years into the future? I don't even know what I want for dinner 2 days from now, let alone how I will feel decades from now.
 
It doesn't sound like you want to get hitched, actually.

I'm sure someone else will chime in and disagree, but logic doesn't really have jack to do with it, nor does objectivity.
 
Marry someone who likes you. If they love you they think they own you. Door swings both ways on that one.:)
 
Norman said:
Marry someone who likes you. If they love you they think they own you. Door swings both ways on that one.:)
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Disagree (on the second part).

If they ACTUALLY love you, they will not think they own you.
 
Pi1otguy said:
WRT getting hitched, how does one make such a decision?

I've been trying to approach this objectively and purely logically but that doesn't seem to work. I guess the real question is how can I make a such a huge decision in the present based partially on feelings that essentially requires me predict how I will feel 5, 10, 20, 40+ years into the future? I don't even know what I want for dinner 2 days from now, let alone how I will feel decades from now.
Click to expand...

5, 10, 20, 40+ years in the future your feelings will change. Real love will not be quantified by how you feel.
 
I didn't know either. In fact, I was pretty sure it wouldn't. 29 years later and I'm still married and in love with her.
 
Also... you simply cannot go in thinking things will stay the same for the two of you forever. Things will change, and sometimes things (and people) change radically and dramatically. The question is... how do you deal with it? Do you walk away and contribute to an increased divorce rate, or do you stick with it and make it work no matter what happens? Are you willing to sacrifice to make it work? If not... you're not ready.
 
Pre-marriage checklist:

-Be with girl at least 3 years.

-No major problems.

-Talk through and be in agreement on where you will go/how you will live

-Be financially stable



The rest is about feelings... nothing more than feelings.
 
You are not ready.....

1st, you need to be friends.
2nd, you need to be able to talk about money, openly and frankly.
3rd, you need to have the same idea on kids, no kids, how many kids.
4th, you need to not be able to picture your life without her.
5th, you need to be over at least 25 years old and dated 3 plus years.

Trust me, I'm on wife number 2.... :-)
 
My wife is 9 years my senior. I married her because I love her and wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. Including raising her 3 kids.

After 41+ years, I made the right decision.

We had dis-agreements, occasionally, but both of us decided to work out our problems together.

My 3 rules for a healthy marriage:

1. Never tell her she, "Always does this or that...":no:
2. Never tell her she, "Never does this or that...":no:
3. If it won't matter 7 days from now, then don't bring it up. :nono:

Makes for a quiet marriage, but it has worked well. :yes:

BTW, my wife is smarter than I am and I have learned that if I treat her like a "Queen", I get treated like a "King."

Terry
 
tangopapa said:
It doesn't sound like you want to get hitched, actually.

I'm sure someone else will chime in and disagree, but logic doesn't really have jack to do with it, nor does objectivity.
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Yes and no. I want to, but my parents, grandparents, and one uncle are the only family members I know who are/were happily married for a long time. It's just that I've seen many others go from happily married to divorced in short order.

Surely there has to be something more concrete than me knowing that "she is the one"?
 
tangopapa said:
5, 10, 20, 40+ years in the future your feelings will change. Real love will not be quantified by how you feel.
Click to expand...

This, this, and this. Real love is a choice that you make and recommit to every day. Some days it will be easy, some days not so much. If you care about this person enough to lay down everything for her, then make your choice and don't look back.
 
I knew I was ready to get married when I didn't care about the wedding. I just wanted to be married. I see a lot of folks blinded by the wedding and not thinking past it. I guess thats where these starter marriages come from.

Beyond that, I am a much different person I was 20 years ago when I proposed. Lucky for me, my wife and I have grown together not separately. I'm not sure how you forsee that. I'm just lucky I guess.

Edit: One more thing: you know how you have an argument with a girlfriend and in the back of your mind, you think "is she the one for me?" or "is this something worth breaking up over?" You know how you don't generally think that about your relatives? I'd say you're ready to get married when you think of your significant other as more of a relative than a girlfriend.

P.S. My wife told me long ago that if I ever leave her, she's coming with me.
 
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Go read up on divorce rape and what the courts will do to you if she ain't haaaappy. Unless you are a low prospects man scoring a sugar momma marriage is nutz.
 
Pi1otguy said:
WRT getting hitched, how does one make such a decision?

I've been trying to approach this objectively and purely logically but that doesn't seem to work. I guess the real question is how can I make a such a huge decision in the present based partially on feelings that essentially requires me predict how I will feel 5, 10, 20, 40+ years into the future? I don't even know what I want for dinner 2 days from now, let alone how I will feel decades from now.
Click to expand...

I don't mean to over-generalize, my feeling on this is a lot of people get divorced because they aren't willing to put the work in. I say this as someone who went through a bad divorce and did put the work in, so I don't think I'm speaking entirely out of turn here.

You say your parents, grandparents, and one uncle are the only family members who have been happily married for a long time. I'd say that's a hell of an example, and probably a better statistic than some families these days. Fact is, if you love this person, and you are absolutely sure you know this person and aren't "blinded" by puppy love (you better be 100% sure you really know her, or you're in for a world of hurt), and want to spend the rest of your life with her, why does it matter what your extended family's experiences have been? You can't gauge the future of your relationship based on things like that.
 
Love is a commitment, not an emotion. You will know you are ready when you can't imagine a future without her.
 
N2124v said:
5th, you need to be over at least 25 years old and dated 3 plus years.
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Meh. When my wife and I got married, she was 17 and I was 18. She graduated high school the week before the wedding (and no, our first child wasn't born for a little over a year). It will be 34 years on Monday. Admittedly, we're kind of outliers. :)
 
One thing's for sure. Once you're married you can free up a part of your brain for remembering the important things in life because you will no longer be required to remember any of the mistakes you ever made because...

...there is absolutely no reason that two people need to remember each and every one of them.

;)
 
Pi1otguy said:
WRT getting hitched, how does one make such a decision?

I've been trying to approach this objectively and purely logically but that doesn't seem to work. I guess the real question is how can I make a such a huge decision in the present based partially on feelings that essentially requires me predict how I will feel 5, 10, 20, 40+ years into the future? I don't even know what I want for dinner 2 days from now, let alone how I will feel decades from now.
Click to expand...

I've often thought that marriage should be like a sports contract. 5-10 years Max with the ability to renegotiate terms. If you don't like each other the contract expires. It was a good idea up until I asked my wife about it. :rolleyes:

:lol:
 
timwinters said:
One thing's for sure. Once you're married you can free up a part of your brain for remembering the important things in life because you will no longer be required to remember any of the mistakes you ever made because...

...there is absolutely no reason that two people need to remember each and every one of them.

;)
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:rofl::rofl::rofl:

That was true with my first wife.

:rofl::eek:
 
Good food for thought here, even for those of us decades into our relationships.

I am reminded of my lessons on landing with my CFI. Always there was the list of ingredients for a perfect landing that started five miles out of the airport. And usually one or more things weren't perfect and I didn't grease it. That didn't make the landing bad necessarily, just not perfect. And sometimes when enough things weren't right you had to abort, go around, and try again.

My sense is that the OP is opinion shopping, looking for someone to say 'don't do it, there are too many unknowns'. And for this reason, he should spare the potential spouse a lot of heartache by not marrying, at least while that mindset prevails.

But, if the OP is honest about it, then maybe his thinking can change enough to make this a good idea. Like the landing sequence, we don't say ' I'm not going to try to land because too many things can go wrong. I don't even know what the crosswind on short final is going to be like.' Like in life, we move forward, encounter, and respond as best we can.

How's that for tying it back to the theme of this board?
 
Mostly before getting married, and even after, my wife and I got told we were doing this or that wrong in our relationship by well meaning friends.

Well, those advice givers who are married have marriages and relationships that work a lot different than ours. I know we're happy with how we are, I think they are too...

Point is, asking others is a nice sanity check and it can give you ideas but its got to come down to you and her and what works for you guys.

I think there are basics everyone needs to do before hand... knowing each other for long enough, compatable visions of future life, etc. but in the end it's about you two not anyone else.
 
If the test of any decision made at 25 is how you're going to feel about it when you're 65, the answer is that you got no clue.
 
Geico266 said:
I've often thought that marriage should be like a sports contract. 5-10 years Max with the ability to renegotiate terms. If you don't like each other the contract expires. It was a good idea up until I asked my wife about it. :rolleyes:

:lol:
Click to expand...

I had the same sort of discussion with mine "It should be like an enlistment! At the end of the term you re-enlist, or you go". Yeah, THAT worked out.

Marriage is two things, a legal relationship and an emotional commitment. You can have the second without the first, but DON'T do the first without the second.

My advice to my daughter is to get married when she wants to have children with someone. Otherwise, live HER life and love whoever she loves.
 
steingar said:
This one is easy. If you don't know, you aren't ready.
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Terry said:
BTW, my wife is smarter than I am and I have learned that if I treat her like a "Queen", I get treated like a "King."

Terry
Click to expand...

bluesky74656 said:
This, this, and this. Real love is a choice that you make and recommit to every day. Some days it will be easy, some days not so much. If you care about this person enough to lay down everything for her, then make your choice and don't look back.
Click to expand...

wabower said:
If the test of any decision made at 25 is how you're going to feel about it when you're 65, the answer is that you got no clue.
Click to expand...
:yeahthat:
 
wabower said:
If the test of any decision made at 25 is how you're going to feel about it when you're 65, the answer is that you got no clue.
Click to expand...
Unless it's a tattoo. If it's going to look stupid when you're 65, don't get it when you're 25. :)
 
:rofl: I see some each year in Palm Springs that cause involuntary coke-spitting. At first I wonder what they were thinking, then just as quickly conclude that they weren't.

DaleB said:
Unless it's a tattoo. If it's going to look stupid when you're 65, don't get it when you're 25. :)
Click to expand...
 
If you have to ask, you aren't ready.

For those who put hard and fast rules on how old you should be, there are no hard and fast rules. Someone noted above that he was 18 and she was 17 when they got married and are still together years later. You got me beat, I was 21 and she was 19. Our 40th anniversary is the end of July. Do we agree on everything? No. Have we had fights with lots of yelling? So few that kids and pets ran into hiding it was so unusual. Usually, where there is a disagreement it gets very quiet. My wife likes to think she is always right in those disagreements. I've learned that its just easier to let it slide.

Do we love each other the same way we did when we got married? Maybe, maybe not. But the love is still there and I'm certainly not going to do anything to rock the boat. I found the right girl in high school and we'll stick together "until death do us part".

Do you feel this way about your girlfriend? Have you been together long enough to really know each other? Yes, we were young, but we had known each other for about 5 years when we tied the knot. Are we the same now as then? I sure hope not. People grow. But what is great is when you grow together. Good luck to you both.
 
Pi1otguy said:
WRT getting hitched, how does one make such a decision?

I've been trying to approach this objectively and purely logically but that doesn't seem to work. I guess the real question is how can I make a such a huge decision in the present based partially on feelings that essentially requires me predict how I will feel 5, 10, 20, 40+ years into the future? I don't even know what I want for dinner 2 days from now, let alone how I will feel decades from now.
Click to expand...

Love is a decision.
Both parties have a free will.
There are no guarantees.
 
You're putting too much thought into it. When my wife and I met, we spent EVERY waking moment together, or planning to be together when whatever was keeping us apart was over.

At no point did either of us even think about the future, we just knew we were happy with what we were doing.

We were only dating for like 6 months when I popped the question, primarily because I just knew it was going to happen, from day 1. I had never had a connection like that one.

I think one of the reasons people get divorced so often is that they try to apply some sort of rule like you're describing toward the activity, and then when they think they nailed it, they were wrong.

Just do it if it feels right, and deal with the consequences later if you're wrong.
 
Length of time knowing someone has little bearing on the depth (quality) of that knowledge. I've seen several relationship that follow this asinine rule of 'it's been long enough, let's move to the next level'. In that case, it's a crap shoot.
 
The only advice that I got about marriage that I chose to remember is this: marry your best friend.

My take on it is, you don't know who your best friend is until you have been through a real, throw down, difficult situation together. Be ready though. You may find out you aren't such a good friend. But what happens after that moment is what matters.

The whole 10 years from now is a smoke screen. 5 years ago I never would have guessed I would be a pilot. She learned an important lesson about buying me an introductory flight :)
 
masloki said:
The only advice that I got about marriage that I chose to remember is this: marry your best friend.

My take on it is, you don't know who your best friend is until you have been through a real, throw down, difficult situation together. Be ready though. You may find out you aren't such a good friend. But what happens after that moment is what matters.

The whole 10 years from now is a smoke screen. 5 years ago I never would have guessed I would be a pilot. She learned an important lesson about buying me an introductory flight :)
Click to expand...

I think my best friend would be a bit put off if I married him instead of my wife. I'm pretty sure he'd be a bit upset that he was suddenly found in the middle of a gay marriage...
 
Well sure, anybody would be surprised if he found himself in the middle of a marriage. The trick is to start at the beginning.

I think Winnie the Pooh said something like that, though probably about honey instead of marriage.
 
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