| > But it is also hard to be with someone and is very hard to take care of kids and family and such. And it is waaay harder to be with wrong person. Strong disagree. It's a different kind of hard. People can handle hard. Running a marathon is hard but a million do so every year for no reason other than maybe it's hard. The difference between taking care of kids and having a family is that it's meaningful and to most deeply satisfying. Sure there are some people that don't get any satisfaction, but I think it's fair to say that it's not the typical experience across every Western culture. Let's stop pretending everything is morally equivalent. "I'm raising an autistic child to be a functional member of society", "oh that's nothing! I just mad Diamond II with 61% win rate over 200 games in League!" I don't know what "being with the wrong person" means. There is no "right" or "wrong" person as the world doesn't revolve around you. If you're actually in an abusive relationship, you should get out obviously. But what's the alternative? Drifting. Emptiness. No purpose or companionship. Spending the rest of your lives with pets asking for life hacks on how to manage boredom. Video games, netflix, personal indulgence and self gratification, medication. This is going to be weirdly controversial on this forum but is advice I would give to my children: most people should aim to do what we've been biologically evolved to do, namely find companionship and love w/ someone and raise a family. If you're an outlier and you have a shot of sending someone to Mars, sure, go all in on that, but for nearly everyone else, this is your best chance for a fulfilling meaningful life. |
> I don't know what "being with the wrong person" means. There is no "right" or "wrong" person as the world doesn't revolve around you.
Ho boy. Listen, I was married for 6 years, separated / divorced for 5 years, and now have been married for 10 years. You have no idea what kind of hell those last few years of the first marriage were. I had no idea until I'd been separated for a year, and gotten back to some sense of normalcy. I can't even describe to you what it's like to live in a house where you're emotionally wounded continually, or to realize the best you can hope from an attempt at a "date" is "it didn't explode".
One of the problems my ex and I had getting help was that people just couldn't seem to understand how bad it was. We'd describe something, people would say, "Oh yeah, marriage is hard, it will get better." Well no; our marriage was way worse, and it never got better.
The second marriage is so different. It's the kind of hard you're talking about -- we put in effort, it pays off. We argue, then we sort things out. We're not like some movie romance, but we're fundamentally a team. Some part of it is certainly "I learned something"; but a big part of it was definitely "It wasn't all me".
ETA: And, apparently, my ex has now been married to someone else for 11 years. Again, I'm sure she learned something from the disaster of our marriage that helped her in her second one. But I can't help but think there was something more than that: something difference in personality between myself and her current husband, such that she and I couldn't work things out but the two of them can.