Things I Wish I Had Known Before We Got Married | Hacker News Reader

Things I Wish I Had Known Before We Got Married

relevantmagazine.com

18 pointsjkuria13 comments

How is a Christian biologist different from a biologist? Is "Christian biologist" code for something?

There is a large false dichotomy between science and religion, that 'Christian' biologist does give a large degree of more information.

False dichotomy? Science is based on verifiable facts and religion is based on belief and faith. This is the place for a debate and I won't engage in one, but I couldn't let that one go. Adding 'Christian' in front of biologist doesn't extend the science in the least.

The main problem -- finding it difficult to live with a person -- is largely ameliorated amongst couples for whom Scripture-with-a-capital-S and references to Christian biologists (why does their faith matter?) is not part of the ordinary discussion.

Because they shack up before getting married.

What's the difference between "shacking up" and getting married? Other than a piece of paper.

But I agree that getting married as young as possible is a good idea. (And I don't care if you call it marriage, or living together - it's effectively the same thing.)

And Scripture recommends getting married young BTW, so your distinction doesn't exist.

People who get married later in life have a hard time adjusting to having someone else in their life who needs to be their number one priority.

> What's the difference between "shacking up" and getting married? Other than a piece of paper.

There are legal and, for people who care, religious differences.

Having both lived with people and married one, and being absolutely atheistic, and someone who previously thought "it's just a piece of paper"... it's not, and I was wrong. Being married is different.

There's also some reasons to believe that cohabitating before marriage (to the same person) leads to higher rates of divorce: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/opinion/sunday/the-downsid...

What's different about it? I'm not 100% sure. But none of the guys I lived with (for years) caused me the kind of angst that my husband did at first, when I moved in with him and immediately got married a few weeks after. (Prior, we didn't really live together before marriage except for weeks/months at a time at the others' apartment, living in different countries.) I'd never had a terrible "adjustment period" before, but did this time… and believe me, on paper, previous boyfriends were way more annoying than my husband was, even in those first few months. We got through it, obviously. I'm grateful for him every day.

I'd always been a committed and faithful girlfriend to the others but it just isn't the same as being married. Which surprised me as much as anyone.

Intellectual types underrate the importance of ceremony. I now believe that's a mistake.

> There's also some reasons to believe that cohabitating before marriage (to the same person) leads to higher rates of divorce

The problem with seeing this as a causal relationship from cohabitation to divorce is that there's no control for religious belief.

The same religious beliefs and social structures that deter pre-marriage cohabitation also create pressure not to divorce.

And I quote:

"...however, studies have shown that the effect is not entirely explained by individual characteristics like religion, education or politics. Research suggests that at least some of the risks may lie in cohabitation itself."

TIL.

If you put your feelings on a spreadsheet and make charts out of it, you're gonna be a bad husband.

The vast majority of my experience suggests that analysing important factors significantly improves decision making and radically improves the odds of a far superior outcome. Do you have any evidence that thinking carefully about how you feel makes one a bad husband? I would have thought just the opposite.

Your emotional life will not be somehow better or mere genuine by just letting it roam free without any guidance. Introspection and self criticism is useful to self improvments. I don't see how doing it systematically would be harmful.

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