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Comment by thex10 | Hacker News Reader

Well, we're taught to prioritize career and education before other people, for a variety of reasons.

As an anecdote, I, a female millennial, was told through most of my adolescence by my whole family, "don't let a man ruin your future." (Before anyone wants to reply to whine about this statement - you don't know anything about what the women of my family had been through at the hands of men. So whine elsewhere.) By marrying age, getting married was certainly one of the /last/ things I cared about.

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They should have said "don't let a bad man ruin your future," they probably had experiences limited to their own circles of men, but it was short-sighted of them to think you would be constrained to the same fate.

Probably a good point! But how easy is it to tell good vs bad partner before taking collateral damage? Certainly it's easier to punt the issue until after you become self-sustaining, IMO

I've found the opposite to be true. It's harder to build the type of commitment necessary for a successful marriage when neither of you really needs the other one. If both of you prioritized career over family leading up to the point of marriage, that's not likely to change after you're married. This is fine (if somewhat less meaningful) as long as you both remain financially and professionally independent, but the moment one of you loses a job or faces a major life challenge that strips you of your success, the other is going to be faced with a choice of either reorienting their priorities or letting you go. Often people choose the former.

In the case of my wife and I, we built our lives together. When we met, we had little or nothing. So our priorities were never material, always each other, and everything we have is shared.

It's harder to build the type of commitment necessary for a successful marriage when neither of you really needs the other one.

In the case of my wife and I, we built our lives together.

I hope you and your wife have a long, happy marriage. But, I think you are oversimplifying by quite a lot. Needing each other is not automatically a recipe for a successful marriage.

I was married more than 20 years. I am divorced. The divorce was amicable and I have no regrets. For various reasons, I have thought about this quite a lot, and I think no matter your circumstance, finding a real meeting of the minds is a serious challenge. If two people can achieve that, I think they can be okay. If they cannot, they will not be -- regardless of whether they stay together or divorce.

Is it okay for a good man to ruin her future?

Since you know a lot about short-sightedness, can you comment on whether it's short-sighted to correct a stranger's family's advice based on your guesses of their experiences?

Re-frame the context hypothetically, using race instead of gender, and then tell me if you still feel that what you're saying is fair.

That takes a bit of work, since the context is that she's expected to marry a man, but she's not expected to marry someone of any particular race. However, in cultures where you have an expectation to marry within your race, it'd be fair. I come from one of these cultures, and I find a lot of what my family tells me about race and dating to be reprehensible, but if they were to say something like this about the race that we all are and that I'm semi-expected to marry within, it would be very different from when they stereotype other races.

How about "Don't ruin your future"? It doesn't matter what the cause is: "man", "good man", "purple man", "flesh-eating bacteria", etc.

Consider freezing your eggs in case you find Mr. Right later rather than sooner.

There can be a lot of hurt feelings on all sides of the issues of fertility, sexuality, and relationships.

I want to get two things out before too many feelings are hurt:

1) Not being able to conceive because your eggs are too old is agonizing. Past age 35, egg quality tends to degrade quickly. Inability to conceive with one's own eggs can lead couples to spend tens of thousands of dollars to try and cheat time with therapies. Ultimately you might have to go egg donor or even surrogate mother if you've got more problems because you REALLY want a baby, which is now in buku dinero territory.

And all the while that you're going through these expensive, invasive, painful, and depressing rounds of treatment, you're thinking, "if ONLY I had a chance to conceive in my 20's when my chances were so much better!"

2) You can now freeze unfertilized eggs, this wasn't even possible 5 years ago. The technology is now officially amazing. YES, it costs a lot, maybe your parents can help pay for it since this is for them as well. Think of it like buying insurance. If you're a female with the means, I think you should do it.

Or consider the fact that not having kids is a perfectly okay decision.

Freezing your eggs does not mean you will have kids, just you can have kids.

It certainly doesn't mean that you can have kids, but it improves your odds a bit for an extra 5-10 years.

I dislike this sentiment. Not everyone wants kids. Usually meeting Mr. Right doesn't change whether someone wants children or not.

This is true, but then again not everyone thinks the same in their twenties as their forties. Unfortunately, time waits for no one and if you do change your mind then you can.

What are your thoughts now? Still one of the last things on your priority list?

Thanks for asking - I'm happy to say I've enjoyed good relationships overall. I got engaged at the end of undergrad, married at the end of grad school, and am now happily married (a rarity among my unmarried peers). :)

If your family's women have had a 'hard time' at the hands of men, it's perfectly understandable that they would say this, that doesn't make it right.

One, probably 'very important' thing that came from their relationships was you :).

Also - having grown up mostly with my mother, who didn't have that much negative to say about my father or other men - still - it took me 30 years to process just how 'one sided' these kinds of things are. 'It takes two' to disagree. There is always another side. I've seen women psychologically abuse and harass men to their breaking point and they felt no remorse or responsibility in the matter (as well as men who were just as bad).

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